Your sister’s trouble is not strange at all when you look at it a certain way. It is an old, old story, older than the prophets, older than the hills. A human heart was made with a great emptiness in it, an emptiness shaped like God. And we keep trying to fill that hollow with things that are not God, and for an hour it seems to work, and then the morning comes and the emptiness is back, deeper and colder than before. A concert, a celebrity, a
thrill, these are cups too small to hold the ocean, and the soul knows it and aches.
You see it in her face this morning. Last night she was full, and now she is hollowed out again. That is the way of idols. They give a little, enough to make us trust them, and then they take it all back and leave us worse than we were. But do not be too hard upon her in your heart. We have all knelt at some shrine that could not save. The thing itself may be innocent, music is a lovely gift, and joy is not forbidden, but when a good thing becomes a necessary thing, when the heart says, “I cannot be happy without this,” then that good thing has been set upon a throne, and the true King is shut out.
There is a secret your sister has not yet learned, one that the Apostle Paul said he had to learn, that contentment is not found in having what we want, but in wanting what we have because we have Him. Paul was an old man in a Roman dungeon when he wrote that he had learned to be content in every state. He did not say it came naturally. He did not say it dropped upon him from the sky. He learned it, slowly, through hunger and abundance, through honor and humiliation. And the tutor who taught him was the blessed Spirit of God, using the hard mercies of life. Your sister is in school right now, though she does not know it. The sharp ache of this morning is the goad that drives her toward the only fountain that never runs dry.
Think of it like this. A child cries for a bright toy in a shop window, and the father walks on. The child cannot understand. The toy is so shiny, and it would make her so happy, why will he not give it? But the father knows that she has a chest full of such trinkets already, each one broken and forgotten within a week. He has something better for her, something solid, something that will last when all the paint has worn off everything else. And so he holds her hand and walks on, and she weeps, and he bears her weeping because he loves her.
God is holding your sister’s hand this morning.
When the heart clamors for more concerts, more thrills, more of what the world calls living, it is really crying out for Him, for His beauty, His fullness, His unending delight, but it does not know His name. Pray that she would learn to name Him. Pray not only that she would be grateful (gratitude is the sweet outcome, not the root), but that she would see Jesus. A soul that truly sees Christ hanging on the tree for her, rising from the tomb for her, preparing a place for her, that soul begins to find other glories strangely dim. The concert lights flicker; the celebrity’s voice fades. What have I to do any more with idols? That is the cry of a heart that has beheld the altogether lovely One.
And do you know what a tender thing that is? God does not thunder that cry into us. He speaks it, as it were, from His own heart into ours, and one day we look up and find ourselves saying it back to Him, and we hardly know how it happened. “Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?” It is a prophecy, not a command, a promise of what grace will do. So do not despair for her. The pattern may be deep, but the grace of God is deeper still.
Let me give you a homely picture. Have you ever received a love letter in a black-edged envelope? The envelope told of mourning, but the letter inside spoke of changeless love and a coming wedding day. Many of God’s best mercies come to us wrapped in the black edges of disappointment. This morning’s unhappiness may be such an envelope. Inside, if she will open it, is the whisper of the Beloved: “I am enough for you. Come to Me, and I will give you rest.”
So pray for her, but pray with this confidence, that the Shepherd who seeks the one lost sheep will not stop until He finds her. Ask Him to water her soul with the dew of heaven until every other cistern proves itself broken. Ask that her next happy time would not be a fresh wound, but a seed sown in good ground, watered with the knowledge that all true prosperity flows from the Father of lights.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, Thou who art the Fountain of living waters, look upon this dear sister who drinks from broken cisterns and wonders why her thirst returns. Thou knowest the weariness of that chase, for Thou didst sit weary by a well and offer living water to a woman who had tried many things and found none of them lasting. Meet her this morning in her disappointment. Let her misery be a doorway, not a dungeon. Show her that all the goodness and prosperity Thou dost give to Thy children makes them fear and tremble with holy wonder, because it is all of grace. Wean her from the thin sweetness of entertainment and draw her to the feast of Thy presence. Give her a definite hunger for Thyself, a hunger that concerts cannot satisfy and celebrities cannot touch. And fill her with such a portion of Thy joy that the glitter of this world loses its power. We ask this in Thy name, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
