“I think my teeth are swollen” I told DaLee. Now I know that it’s probably impossible for teeth to swell but let me explain. At some point over Fall break, I apparently cracked a tooth. I finally made it to the dentist a few weeks later for the confirmation and the bad news – it had to come out. I lucked upon a consultation visit with an oral surgeon at the beginning of Christmas break (“Yeah, you cracked your tooth and it needs to come out.”) and then had the “fun” of oral surgery on the last day before going back to school. So, now I have a molar size gap in my upper jaw.
As it healed, I couldn’t help but feel that the teeth on either side of my gap now felt extremely large! What a strange sensation! As I mulled it over, I figured with the one tooth gone, I was now feeling the edges of the other teeth. These were edges I had never felt before when they were in line with the previous neighbor. They’re not actually bigger, just more prominent.
Our lives can have a similar effect. God made each of us in order to have a relationship with Him. It’s hard-wired into us. I’ve heard it called a “God shaped void.” Being God shaped, only God can fill it. Before we ask God into our lives to fill that void, however, we try to fill it with other things like money, prestige, status, stuff. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with any of those things but without God in our lives, they all seem bigger and more important than they really are.
Now all analogies break down at some point and I’m not suggesting that God is only one part of us – He is and should be our all in all. Without Him though, everything else is out of whack! God puts everything else in order and in proper perspective. Chew on that for a while!
Until our next togethering,
love ya,
Bret
