Chasing the Wind

There was once a man they called the Teacher. He was the wisest king who ever lived. And he had something most people only dream of.

He had everything.

Do you know what that would be like? To have everything?

The Teacher had gold stacked higher than his head. He had gardens with fruit hanging heavy and sweet. He had music whenever he wanted it, and great houses, and cool pools of water, and more servants than he could count. Anything his eyes wanted, he reached out and took it.

But one strange thing he could not understand.

It was never enough.

He would get the thing he wanted. And he would be glad. For a little while. And then the gladness would slip away like water through his fingers, and the empty feeling would come creeping back. So he would reach for something new. A bigger garden. A sweeter song. A taller pile of gold.

And that one wasn't enough either.

The Teacher chased and chased. He worked under the hot sun until his hands ached. He chased after being clever. He chased after laughing and feasting. He chased after every beautiful thing.

But you cannot catch the wind, can you?

You can feel it on your face. You can watch it bend the tall grass. But when you close your hand around it and peek inside, your hand is empty. The wind is gone.

That is how all of it felt to the Teacher. Like chasing the wind.

Maybe you have felt a small piece of this. You wanted something so badly. You finally got it. And it was wonderful, oh it was wonderful, for a day, for a week. And then it sat in the corner gathering dust, and the wanting woke up in you again, looking for the next thing.

There is a reason for that wanting. The Teacher found it at the very end, and he wrote it down for us, like a message tucked in a bottle.

God, he said, has set eternity in our hearts.

Eternity means forever. When God made you, he reached down and placed something inside you shaped like forever. A little room, deep in you. And the room is forever-sized.

So no toy fits it, and no pile of gold can fill it, no garden, no song, nothing under the whole wide sun. They are all too small. They were always going to be too small. You were made with a forever-shaped room, and only a forever-kind of love can ever fill it.

Long before, when the world was new, the first people walked with God in a garden, in the cool of the day. The room in you was made for a friendship like that.

The Teacher did not know yet whose love would come and fill it. He felt the ache. He just couldn't see the One who was coming to answer it.

But you can see a little further than he could.

Because there is Someone who never slips away like water, who never blows off like the wind. Someone everlasting, who looks right at you and says, come to me, and I will be the spring inside you that never, ever runs dry.

The forever-shaped room deep in you has been waiting for him from the very start.