Restless Souls: Seeking True Satisfaction

By Elizabeth Prata

I wrote the other day about the Ecclesiastes syndrome, of sadly trying to find satisfaction and rest in worldly things. It’s futile, because it’s all vanity.

I was saved in my early 40s, so that means I spent a lot of years groping, searching, trying to find that perfect recipe that will allow my restless soul to rest. Of course, only Jesus fulfills that.

I enjoyed books and television shows that showed an alternate world. A world that seemed near enough to touch, if I just knew where to reach out my hand. Ones like The Librarians, Warehouse 13, Harry Potter, the Narnia closet and so on. As a child, reading The Secret Garden was a wonder. It was fascinating to me to think that an alternate world existed so close we could touch it, IF we could see it. IF we could find it.

Where was it?!

2 Kings 6:17 has a glimpse for us- Then Elisha prayed and said, “Lord, please, open his eyes so that he may see.” And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

As I approached the momentous moment of salvation, my ‘search’ for the alternate world became more visual as I crafted and made booklets and journals in my bookbinding phase. I had a palpable sense that there was another world nearby. I desperately sought it. That restlessness of spirit is a real thing. Bunyan wrote about it. he searched for a few years before the Lord graciously saved him. Spurgeon too. It’s frustrating to have that deep feeling of pointlessness (“vanity” says Ecclesiastes) and not be able to salve it. Only the Lord can do that, and only in His timing and will.

Here is one of the pages that I made when I was searching.

Of course, we can seek and seek but we will never find that world (heaven) until and unless the Lord God above reveals it to us. We are blind and cannot see. We grope for what we cannot attain. The Lord Jesus is the One who can open our eyes.

Several Bible verses speak of opening our spiritual eyes.

Ephesians 1:17-18, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

Isaiah 35:5, Then the eyes of those who are blind will be opened,
And the ears of those who are deaf will be unstopped.

The gratitude I feel 19 years later that the Lord deigned to wash me, stand me on my feet out of the muck, and give me eyes to see HIM, never diminishes. I remember that hopeless feeling of searching for something that I could not see.

Now having ‘eyes’ to see His wonders through the word, being able to glorify Him in my life and deed through obedience, to know He created this world and the universe and all that is in it, well, there is nothing better.

My search is ended, thanks to His grace.