Empty apart from God

Nathan Busenitz @ http://www.sfpulpit.com, has an excerpt from his new book, Reasons We Believe: Fifty Lines of Evidence that Confirm the Christian Faith. The article is regarding the fact that life without God is meaningless

Echoing the words of Franklin, Christian theologian Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., explains what the rich and famous of our world often learn the hard way:

The truth is that nothing in this earth can finally satisfy us. Much can make us content for a time, but nothing can fill us to the brim. The reason is that our final joy lies “beyond the walls of the world,” as J. R. R. Tolkien put it. Ultimate beauty comes not from a lover or a landscape or a home, but only through them. These earthly things are solid goods, and we naturally relish them. But they are not our final good. They point to what is “higher up” and “further back.” [Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Engaging God’s World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 6. ]

From the summary:

In other words, they point to God. As the famous church father Augustine prayed, “O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”[Augustine, Confessions, translated by Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford, 1992), 145 (8.7.17); 3 (1.1.1). Cited from Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World, 6.]

God created us for a purpose. When we deny His existence, we simultaneously deny the purpose for which He created us. Thus, to deny God is to embrace despair and hopelessness. On the flip side, to embrace God is to discover the source of hope, satisfaction, purpose, and fulfillment. In the words of philosopher Blaise Pascal: “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”[Blaise Pascal, cited from The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations, compiled by Mark Water (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 407.]