We may want a good career or a family or a particular kind of life, and these things may come to us. But if so, they will not fill all our niches because we want more than these things can give. Even if we fall deeply in love and marry another human being, we discover that our spiritual and sexual oneness isn't final. It's wonderful, but not final. It might even be as good as human oneness can be, but something in us keeps saying "not this" or "still beyond" . . . We human beings want God even when we think that what we really want is a green valley, or a good time from our past, or a loved one. Of course we do want these things and persons, but we also want what lies behind them. Our "inconsolable secret," says C. S. Lewis, is that we are full of yearnings, sometimes shy and sometimes passionate, that point us beyond the things of earth to the ultimate reality of God.
From: Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision Of Faith, Learning, And Living (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 5, 7.
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