Around 3:00 pm this Thursday afternoon, I expect to be settling down into the leather reclining love seat in my living room for my annual post Thanksgiving Day meal ritual. Kids will be running around the house, there will be the noise of dishes getting cleaned in the kitchen and the CBS football analysts will probably be dissecting a helmet-to-helmet personal foul call.
Yes, there will be a lot of noise, but it won’t matter. I’ll have a really satisfied feeling. My body will need to allocate more energy towards food digestion which means less blood flowing to other parts of the body, including the central nervous system. With blood flow to the CNS decreased, I can foresee only one possible outcome…nap time.
We love food that satisfies. In fact, Mars, Incorporated in the 1980s developed an entire add campaign for one of their candy bars around this theme. C’mon…you know the tune. Sing it with me. “Snickers satisfies you!”
We hunger for many things besides food to satisfy us. People connections. Material possessions. Career advancement. Healthy and well-balanced children. Personal safety and security. Long and prosperous life. Love. Acceptance. Peace. The list goes on and on.
Hunger pains come and go for these things and so does our satisfaction level. We continually strive to be filled and it seems like we can never quite reach the satisfaction level we want. Satisfaction lasts for a short time, but then the hunger pains come back again. We want to be filled again…and again…and again. And each time we are filled it seems like it takes more to satisfy us.
Maybe we are looking to be satisfied by the wrong things. Or maybe we are looking at the wrong sources altogether.
Perhaps this Thanksgiving it’s time for you to recognize that you cannot satisfy yourself with the pleasures of this world. No amount of food, possessions, or Facebook followers will bring the lasting satisfaction you need. Ultimately, total life satisfaction can only be found one place.
It is found in the One who created you and has promised to provide for your every need. “Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.” (Psalm 107:8-9) The truly remarkable part is that once you have tasted of the goodness of God, you will never hunger or thirst again. Jesus explained it this way to a Samaritan woman in John 4 when He held a conversation with her near the town’s well. When she confronted him about how he would draw water from the well to drink, He said, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
The “water” Jesus described was symbolically referring to His message of salvation. And I love the imagery of the fountain – a tiered fountain where water flows upward through the center.
As the water spills outward at the peak, it trickles down into the first tier until it is full. The top tier trickles down into the one below it and so on until each successive tier is full. The tiers represent the various areas of our life wherein we try to find satisfaction and fulfillment. Only when we have Jesus flowing through the center of our life can our tiers of faith, career, family, security, possessions, love, peace, health, etc. truly and completely be filled.
Where are you today with your relationship with God? If you don’t know Him, consider reaching out to him today. He really does satisfy. And He wants to fill your tiers with His goodness.
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