That Empty Feeling

Life can leave you with an empty feeling.

A newspaper obituary caught my eye the other day because I recognized the name. For years he had been a TV news anchor for a major network, but due to health problems he spent his final years in a nursing home where he died in his early 70s. There would be no funeral service, the newspaper reported. How sad, I thought, to go from fame to such a lonely-sounding death.

Philosophers describe that empty feeling. H. L. Mencken wrote, "What the meaning of human life may be I don't know. I incline to suspect that it has none." Bertrand Russell wrote, "The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long."

Athletes experience that empty feeling—especially when there are no more championships to win, no more crowds to cheer, and their bodies that once performed amazing feats will barely function at all. Baseball great Mickey Mantle died at 63. He said, "If I knew I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself."

Musicians sing about it. In 1978 the group called Kansas recorded "Dust in the Wind." We're "just a drop of water in an endless sea," they sang, and "All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see."

Poets write about that empty feeling. Shakespeare's Macbeth contains the famous line, "Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." A. E. Housman described himself this way: "I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made." John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono wrote a one-line poem called "Lighting Piece": "Light a match and watch it till it goes out."

Celebrities experience that empty feeling. Martha Stewart has wealth and fame, but is she an icon of peace and contentment? Was Marilyn Monroe? Is Michael Jackson?

Wealthy financiers wrestle with it. Well-known as a filmmaker and aviator, Howard Hughes is also remembered for his extreme eccentricity and melancholy. When he died in a plane crash in 1976, he left an estate estimated at $2 billion, which was eventually divided up among 22 cousins.

In Christ we have been "redeemed from the empty way of life" (1 Peter 1:18).

Even cartoon characters talk about that empty feeling. One says, "What are you up to today?" His friend responds, "I'm pondering life, and the meaning of existence. What about you?" And the reply comes back, "I'm not doing anything either."

All of us experience that empty feeling at times. It stirs at a funeral service, after a bitter loss on the playing field, during a frustrating day at work, and in those quiet moments when life seems little more than a trivial pursuit. Surprisingly, you may even experience that empty feeling during some of life's high points: when the wedding reception ends, after the Christmas gifts have been unwrapped, after the church's successful building campaign has been completed, when you finally get the job or the house you always wanted, after you retire and can play all the golf you want.

Three thousand years ago there lived a man who seemed to have it all. He received the best education. He enjoyed the finest food and wine. He lived in a mansion and surrounded himself with gardens and parks full of fruit trees. At his fingertips were all the privileges of royalty. Maids and butlers served him, singers entertained him, hundreds of women were willing to share his bed, soldiers protected him, and the leaders of other nations brought him silver and gold. He led in constructing great buildings. His writings were widely read. He experienced the pleasure of discovery, the glitz and glamour of high society, the accomplishment of hard work, the fun of laughing with friends. But he still had that empty feeling. "When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve," Solomon wrote, "everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind" (Ecclesiastes 2:11).

We long for something solid and satisfying, and the Bible says, "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ" (Colossians 2:9-10). When will we learn that everything else is just chasing after the wind?