Why Can't Life Be Better?

He has also set eternity in the hearts of men (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

But our citizenship is in heaven . . . (Philippians 3:20)

Two nights ago there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth when my daughter’s bath time arrived and she was sent upstairs to get ready for bed. The pain was evoked by the fact that her older brother was allowed to stay downstairs and finish his project for the science fair. Never mind the fact that he wasn’t being allowed to play and have fun. Whatever he was doing, he was not getting ready for bed, and this struck my daughter as grievously unfair.

As she cried and carried on dramatically (she knows how to work it) she voiced her protest in the form of a question that caught me by surprise. Through the tears she asked “why can’t life be better?” Talk about drama. My first impulse was to laugh. Where did this come from? From where I sit her five (almost six) year old life looks pretty good.

After a moment I responded, “Anna, that’s a really good question.” I didn’t actually attempt to answer the question, and my word of affirmation did little to alleviate my daughter’s distress. But I meant it. The question is a good one, and it’s a question that never seems to go away. Whether we’re five or eighty-five or anywhere in between, we ask that question. Why can’t life be better?

There are several possible answers. One good answer is “life isn’t as bad as you think it is right now.” Another version of that answer is simply “get a grip” or “get over it.” We need to be told that at times. A second possible answer is “life can be better when you decide to do something about it.” Abbreviated: “stop whining.” This challenges us to assume some measure of responsibility for our lives and our circumstances. We need to hear that too.

But there’s another answer to the question that helps us understand why the question never goes away. Why do we live our days with a gnawing sense that somehow life could be better? And why do we feel this even when we know we’ve got it pretty good? How do we treat this persistent low-grade discontentment?

No doubt, a short-term mission trip to a disease ridden and poverty stricken part of the world cures us for a while. We get clarity for just a moment on how silly and insipid our woes are when we place them in a global context. But that cure doesn’t last long. We get home and get back in to our lives and the dis-ease creeps in again. There’s something lacking in us. Sure, we’ve got it good – but couldn’t it be better?

The reason for our continual relapse is that we are homesick. There’s something deep inside of us that was designed for perpetual thirst in this world, in this life. It will not be fully quenched or satisfied here, and the reason is that the only thing that can quench it remains beyond us now. Our true home is heaven, our citizenship is there, and we were made to be there with the creator and lover of our souls. We were made for something else.

We can choose to live our lives in denial of this or in rebellion against it. We can keep chasing the one thing that we are certain will do it for us. That could be anything: career, marriage, money, a doctorate, a doctor, a diet. The object of our pursuit is elusive and chameleon-like. As we walk through our days in this world the target keeps changing. And when we attain what we were after, it doesn’t take long for the question to come back. Why can’t life be better? In search of the answer, we set our sights on a new target. We don’t always accurately diagnose our homesickness.

The bed-time bath-time crisis is now forgotten. But someday, for a different reason, my daughter will ask that question again. I will too. Sometimes we’ll need to just get a grip and move on. Sometimes we’ll need to stop whining and take a risk in making life better. But whatever we do in response to the question, we’ll need to recognize our homesickness and remember that God has placed eternity in our hearts. St. Augustine nailed the reason for our restlessness, and he also named the cure. We were made for God, and everything here is making us fit for our true home.

(Two good books that say it better than I could hope to: Craig Barnes, Sacred Thirst and Mark Buchanan, Things Unseen.)