The French philosopher, Pascal, wrote, "There is a God-shaped piece of emptiness inside everyone." That kind of longing for fulfillment is very much reflected in the mood of the Advent season. As Christians, we know there is something incomplete in our lives. We search for meaning. We yearn for inner peace. We seek an end to the hunger in our souls. We hunger for an intimate relationship with a personal God. We keep searching, for we trust that God will transform us and fill the emptiness in our lives.

It is the kind of seeking reflected on by Isaiah in that prayer of lamentation that was read as our Old Testament reading. "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence." He is filled with a sense of longing. A longing for God to do something so strange, so wonderful, so beyond human expectation, that there will be no reason to doubt. He sees the destruction around him. He knows the deep sense of discouragement that pervades the lives of the people of Israel. God seems so far away. He longs for a personal God, a God involved in every aspect of his life, present with him through all the hardships, persecution and difficulty. But then he recognizes how God is revealed to us. That beautiful, intimate image of the potter and the clay comes to him. How does it speak to you? Can you see those magnificent hands of God working the clay, molding, shaping, and reshaping us in God’s own image? People seek to be shaped by the creative hands of God. People seek a close, intimate relationship with the one who is with us and in us.

That kind of longing, that spiritual hunger, is reflected in our secular world as well. People may deny the very existence of God. Yet they still seek ways of filling that emptiness that eats away at them. People are hungry for something that will bring meaning to their lives. There are many destructive ways in which they may seek fulfillment - alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling. The list could go on. Even when people seek spiritual ways of fulfillment, they do not often turn to the institutional church. Perhaps it is not unlike Isaiah’s first reaction. They want a God who will bring about transformation of their state of being through the miraculous. They want to see awesome deeds. They think they will find fulfillment in materialistic ways. They want God to provide in some bacchanalian way.

Last week I watched a program on PBS about Angels and how they can help people. I have no difficulty in understanding why it is that angels are so popular in our present day society. People are seeking to fill the emptiness in their lives. They are searching for an intimate relationship with the spiritual world. Yet there was something so off base about what was offered that it saddened me. For the search for inner meaning became idolatry. What was offered was fulfillment through materialism rather than an entry into the presence of God.

"The problem with humankind is that we don’t expect enough of angels!" The woman being interviewed said. "Don’t just ask for what you need. Ask for everything you want. You’ll get it." Then she went on to relate the story of a woman who was complaining about the lack of material necessities in her life. She was just barely managing to feed her family.

"What are you asking for?" the woman said.

"I ask the angel to give me enough to get me through the week," she replied. "Well that’s the problem," she was told. "You’re not asking for enough." And, of course she went on to relate how great wealth came to her when she began to ask for it.

I don’t know about you. But that is not how I find spiritual fulfillment. It is wonderful to live in a land of plenty. But I don’t think I could feel any more fulfilled in my life by having a million dollars. At the point of our deepest longing, is not material wealth, but the very presence of God. That longing comes, as Pascal noted, from God.

How differently the people of Corinth seek that inner peace, that fulfillment. They face terrible conditions - poverty, slavery, brutality. Yet the Good News of the Gospel gives them a new vision and outlook for the future. They are a people waiting expectantly and with hope. Waiting for the fulfillment of the life of grace, waiting until the fullness of Christ will be revealed, but waiting not as those without hope, but with the knowledge that the gift of life in Christ is already theirs. They know that God is faithful.

We too live in a church expectant, watching with hope for Jesus’ return. We, like Isaiah, may long for some miraculous and awesome theophany. But the Christian is not called to wait passively. We are called to active preparation. God has put us in charge of creation.

So Jesus tells us that it is like a man travelling abroad, leaving his servants in charge. Each has their own task to accomplish. The doorkeeper is to stay awake so as not to be asleep at the return of the master, a return that might happen at any moment. It is not only a matter of staying awake, but of being involved in the task set for us in this world, a task which will result in the fulfillment of God’s promise, in the establishment of God’s kingdom. God expects us to be at work, building the kingdom. That begins with our inner search for the presence of God. It begins with our own study. It begins with our life of prayer. But it calls us to reach out with the message of hope to others.

At a time of real questioning and soul searching, we are called to offer reassurance and hope. We are called to look to God, the potter, who will never forsake us but will continue to shape and mold us until we are all we are meant to be. We are called to bring others into the presence of God.