Something is Missing

Two weeks after my old computer went into retirement, my iPod has now stopped working. Funny how the things that didn’t even exist 20 years ago now seem like necessities.

In a way, the loss of the iPod has hit me harder than the loss of my computer. Because I need my computer for work. And so when it broke down, I had no choice but to go and get a new one. But an iPod only seems necessary. It’s not actually that important. So considering that I don’t actually need one and I just bought a computer and I need to watch my money for a little while, buying a new iPod will have to wait.

And I feel like I’ve just lost a limb.

Last night, I had planned to do some reading for uni. Before I got to that, I was washing up, listening to a podcast, when my iPod just stopped. I tried reformatting it, but that didn’t work. So instead of going onto my uni reading, I started watching television programs on the internet. How that makes any kind of sense at all, I don’t know. It’s not like I use my iPod to read.

I guess it was just that sense that something was missing. Something in my life wasn’t quite right. And I couldn’t function properly without it there.

I don’t need to lose an iPod to feel like that. I often get the sense that something is missing. Or that my life is slightly off track and I need something to pull me back to where I’m meant to be. Or that I am searching for something, but I’m not quite sure what it is or how I will ever find it.

If I walked into a Pentecostal church and explained that feeling, they would tell me it was because I hadn’t found God. They would say that once I am born again and let Jesus into my heart and am filled with the Holy Spirit, that emptiness or sense that I have lost something will automatically disappear.

But I have found God, at least in one sense. And yet that feeling remains.

In another sense, I don’t think I’ve found God at all. And I wonder whether any of us really do find God. Maybe all we do is go searching for Him. And at times He allows us to catch brief glimpses of Him.

Another thing that the Pentecostals say quite a lot is ‘She needs to get God into her life.’ As if God were a thing that could be found and then owned. Put Him on a shelf next to the bible, and believe your search is ended. Kind of like an item in a treasure hunt. Crossed God off the list. Now I need to go searching for wealth and happiness.

God can never be owned. We can’t find him in the sense that we can pick him up and put him in our pocket. Put a label on Him that says ‘This belongs to Liz’. God doesn’t belong to me. God doesn’t belong to anyone. We belong to God.

Instead of getting God into our lives, we need to get our lives into God.

And maybe that’s what missing. It’s not just that something is absent from my life. It’s that my life is not completely where it needs to be. I am the one who’s missing. I’m not quite there yet. And I never will be.

I spend so much time searching for God. And that search will continue. But maybe it’s not just about finding God. Maybe it’s also about losing myself.