The Beautiful Ache: Finding the God Who Satisfies When Life Does Not
EXCERPT FROM CATALOG It's the pang that strikes when loss is sudden, or suddenly realized. It's the stealth tears that fall when something stunningly grand (or nakedly simple) sets holiness on clear display. It arrives with crickets chirping on a June night, or a bright pink sunset slung low and wide across the sky, or the sound of a child's sleepy whisper. It lingers in memory-infused music and nibbles the edges of silent hope. It's evoked by a longed-for touch, or a word well-spoken, delivered just in time. It invades carpool lines and conference rooms with equal deftness. It is no respecter of place or time.  It's the beautiful ache. It says there's more.  More than you've seen and much more than you've longed for. Beyond what you know, and far, far past your strongest yearning. As C. S. Lewis said, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience can satisfy, the most logical explanation is that I was made for another world."  The beautiful ache is that fleeting pang that reminds us of home. Only, not the home we've always known-the home we've never seen. It pierces and pries open the heart, but doesn't near satisfy it. It whets the appetite, but doesn't begin to fill it. It unmasks beauty, but not completely. It reeks of truth, but stops just short of telling all.  Hardly a day goes by that I don't feel it. The trick is learning to allow the ache to take me where it wants to go, to tutor and tantalize my mostly-numb senses with its laser-sharp aim. The challenge is not to kill it off before it fully arrives . . . or dismiss it before it is ready to go.  I don't have to ask if you know what I'm talking about. You do. You've felt the ache too.