All the Way to the Bottom

We got coupons for Friendly's in the mail last week, and they were such a good bargain that we ended up taking my grandmother there two weeks in a row. Everyone's happy--from the youngest kid to the great-grandmother at the same table.

At Friendly's many dinners come with a free sundae: two scoops and one topping, plus the whipped cream and cherry. Very tempting! The waitress brings out the sundaes with special long spoons, designed to fit all the way to the bottom of the narrow glass, so you can get every last drop of that ice cream.

The French philosopher Blaise Pascal is attributed with the concept of a "God-shaped hole" in the soul of every person-- it other words, a profound need for God that is so deeply wired within us that nothing else will satisfy it.

"What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself. "

What does all this have to do with sundaes? I was thinking about the last spoonful of fudge down in the bottom of my dish last week, and about all the short spoons in the world that would never reach that fudge. Only a long spoon was able to reach that depth, and I finally got that last tasty bit. So many people try to compensate for their need for God, like kids grabbing up short spoons, only to be frustrated that they can never reach the bottom. They can't satisfy that need for God with other people, with their careers, their money or their self-reliance.

God created that need within us, and He is the only one with the spoon long enough to find the best part of us.