A friend of mine recently lent me Viktor Frankl’s book – Man’s search for meaning. Before accepting the book from him I had shared with him about a similar book. The hunger for significance by R. C. Sproul. These books’ titles remind me that humans are always hungry for things including meaning and significance. Take for example, success. Is there any man or woman that doesn’t want to be successful? But in his book, Viktor argued that we shouldn’t aim at success (even happiness) rather we should follow our conscience and do what it commands us to do and we should to the best of our knowledge, only then will success follow us because we didn’t think about it. As soon as we become successful, we also discover that success is not final and we continue to hunger for other things. St Augustine may have been thinking about this perennial hunger when he said “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Meaning that only God can solve our ‘hunger problem.’ No wonder the Master said “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” This week, don’t only eat the physical food but feast on the Master and let Him satisfy the eternal hunger of your soul.
“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chamber upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips” Viktor Frankl