The Void

I saw this picture over the weekend. Do you know what this is? I'll give you a couple of hints. First of all, it's huge! The hole is over 3/4 of a mile across.

Second, it's man made. The spiral walls are actually roads. It is 1,722 feet deep and is located in Russia. It's a diamond mine.

There are holes like this all around the world. Once created, and stripped of all the diamonds, they are abandoned. Just a giant hole, waiting to be filled.

I feel like that sometimes. Used up, striped of all of my "good stuff" and abandoned. Left for dead. Do you ever feel like that? I think we're all like that to some degree. So, how can we change that? What can fill us up? How can we get rid of the hole?

Some say that we have a giant God-sized hole in our hearts. YouTube has many sermons about our God-shaped hole. How do they know for sure? There's nothing that tells me that in the Bible. Is it true? I think not. If we had an actual hole in our hearts . . . we'd be dead!

Perhaps it's a figurative hole then - a void maybe . . . or an unfillable emptiness. Or, and this is what I believe, perhaps WE are the hole.

There is definitely something missing in us humans though. And we spend our entire lives trying to fill it. Some try filling the void with drugs. Others fill it with work. Some try alcohol. Others try gambling, over eating or porn. Try as we might, we still can't fill it.

I have a theory.

I do believe we all have something missing in our lives. His name is Jesus. We all try to ignore Him but He can be pretty persistent. And He IS God after all. But He gave us free will and therein lies the problem.

But for those of us who have chosen to believe . . . something wonderful begins to happen. The void begins to lessen. It actually begins to shrink. The void gets filled up with stuff. All kinds of stuff. And we are the ones who chose what it gets filled with.

There is an old mariner's saying that goes, "One bad apple spoils the whole barrel." What do we fill our barrels with? Choose reading the Bible over watch television. Choose worshiping over gossip. Choose listening to uplifting music over watching the news. Garbage in, garbage out. Keep the garbage out!

As we walk through this place let us be careful what we chose to fill ourselves with. We don't want to become an empty hole or a landfill, full of trash and waste. Let us seek to be rich soil where things can grow. Let is be pure, with no room for darkness. Let us fill our void . . . with love.

^"8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy - meditate on these things. ⁹ The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you." - Philippians 4:8-9

World's Biggest Diamond Mine
16 Tons - Tennessee Ernie Ford