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According to Blaise Pascal, everyone has a God shaped vacuum in his life which only God can fill. Many try to fill their life with entertainment, hour after hour, but find themselves empty at the end of it all. Some pour themselves into achieving a great record, or a name for themselves, but after it is done, they don't know what else to do. Some psychologists have identified three things we crave for in our personal life, namely security, significance and self-worth, without which we feel empty inside of us. By security it means a sense of being loved or wanted, or as belonging to someone. Significance is a sense of importance in our life when we realise that we are someone special with certain abilities that others can recognise and appreciate. We feel self-worth when we recognise a meaning and purpose for our life that makes our life worth living. We are generally not aware of this vacuum existing within us, but if we look at ourselves we can see that these are what we are seeking through various things that we do.

Before Adam and Eve fell, they did not feel any such needs in their lives because all these needs were getting met automatically, without their becoming aware of them, by the presence and fellowship of God with them. But the moment they got separated from God, these needs manifested themselves painfully, and they began to devise various ways to satisfy them. Since then, all of us are 'born in sin', with this distance from God, and we immediately start the pursuit of these needs through diverse means. For example, seeking pleasure of various types is one way we try to fill the vacuum of not being loved.

The Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ is God offering a way back for us to Him where we can walk in fellowship with Him and enjoy His unceasing love for us, recognise the value He has shown us by letting His Son die for us, and learn of the individual plan and purpose with which He has created us. The closer we walk with Him, the better these crucial needs get met, and the less we want to run after other things.

But have you thought why people try to keep God out of their life by all means, while going to great lengths to find alternative means of meeting these needs? Why is it that evolution scientists will do everything possible to avoid looking at the possibility of creation, even when they know the gaps in their theories and find errors again and again in the best of their models? One reason is that people don't want to bring God into their lives and then have to give an account to Him for everything they do! They don't mind having a God who will take care of them, but not one who will lay down laws for them and call them to account!

On the other hand, salvation is meant to deliver us from the hold of sin in our lives and fit us into God's plan. As we allow His word through His Spirit to renew us, we can become conformed more and more into His ways and fill the vacuum in us (Ro.12:2).

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