God-Shaped Hole

You don't become a rock star unless you've got something missing somewhere, that is obvious to me. If you were of sound mind or a more complete person, you could feel normal without 70,000 people a night screaming their love for you. Blaise Pascal called it the God-shaped hole. Everyone's got one but some are blacker and wider than others. It's a feeling of being abandoned, cut adrift in space and time. Sometimes this stuff follows the loss of a loved one. With me, I was like the character in an old blues song: 'sometimes I feel like a motherless child.' So many years later, my own hole can still open up. I don't think you can ever completely fill it in this life. You can try to fill it up with songs, family, faith; by living a full life, but when things are silent, you can still hear the hissing of what's Missing. --Bono, "U2 by U2"

O.K. I admit it. Bono is one of my favorite theologians. He is a deeply spiritual person and it shows in his music and his interviews. The concept of a God-shaped hole is an interesting one. For me, it means that place in our hearts, minds and spirits that can only be filed with the loving presence of God. We all try to fill that space with many different things including sex, alcohol, television, etc. but only God can truly fill the void.

As we look at the LGBT community as a whole, there is definitely a God-shaped whole in our tribe that we are only starting to fill. When I am at a party and people discover that I am a pastor, it opens up some interesting conversations. A number of people I talk to are a little bit afraid to attend a church because of bad past experiences, but they still yearn for God. They yearn for the kinds of things only God can truly supply: new life, forgiveness, grace, healing, and peace. Somehow we, who are a part of the church, need to find creative ways to reach those who are searching to fill the God-shaped hole in their lives no matter what letter of the alphabet they attach to their name. If we follow Bono's model, it means we don't have to have all the answers, we just need to be honest about our faith and about how God is working in our lives. This includes our failures as well as our victories.