I must give thanks to my counselor, who this past week introduced me to the concept of the void. For me, just giving a name to this interior longing helped a great deal by helping me see that my condition is not unique and that in not recognizing its presence I sought through different means to satisfy it. My niece and also my counselor mentioned Henri Nouwen as one who wrote of this concept and I think Kierkegaard's writings also make room for it. Perhaps it is a way for me simply to learn to face life in a way that I hadn't before, finding that in all life there is a certain unsatisfied longing that persists even through the most uplifting religious experiences. I always felt ashamed that I didn't seem to "feel" what others apparently felt and wondered what deep fault lay within me.

I believe this concept of void, or emptiness, or longing, is compatible with New Testament teaching in which we are reminded that we are not now what we one day shall be in eternity (I Cor. 13). Surely Jesus did not experience full joy until after the cross ("for the joy set before him endured the cross") and neither shall we until the day of resurrection. Our faith is a means of recognizing the void for what it really is: a sign of our incompleteness, finitude, and fallenness. By such faith then we are able to take our cross and bear it through the void of life in sure hope that one day we shall be complete. Faith accepts reality through confidence in God. Much of our conservative and evangelical religion unfortunately leads us into denial and pretense, and ever increasing means of substitutes are needed in an attempt to fill the void.

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." (Romans 5:22-25) "Waiting for it patiently" is, I believe, bearing our cross.

How can we live without The Rescue? When the void inside of humans is mentioned one thinks immediately of Pascal: in every heart there is a God-shaped vacuum. But what if God enters the void, not to fill it, but to bring a cross? What then? Joy! Joy never comes but with a cross: " for the joy set before him he endured the cross." "Count it all joy, brethren, when you encounter various trials." It is not from the void that we are rescued but within it. To follow Christ is to bear his cross into the void. Faith accepts the void as part of our fallen, human condition; unfaith seeks to be rescued from it in a multitude of ways. Escaping the void is what much fundamentalist and evangelical preaching is all about, but in escaping the void, one also escapes discipleship. Only by walking with Jesus through the void can true joy be found. Much of what modern evangelical American churches offer are means whereby the void can be filled; consequently they have to offer more and more. Because the void can never be filled in this life; it can only be suppressed through varieties of religious experience and activity. It will always re-emerge. Only by embracing it through the cross of Christ can true joy be found. Only in our acceptance of the pangs of finitude do we rejoice in the eternal victory of Christ's cross.