I have been pining to return to my I believe posts so here I go.

To review, when I go into deep thinking about why I believe God exists, here are my main intellectual reasons why:

1. I am here writing this and thinking about it. (Reason and Logic)
2. Beauty and awe seen in nature (Creation).
3. 2 +2 = 4 not 3 or 4.99999 (Absolute truths exists)
4. Mystery. There are things that we can’t explain.
5. A moral code that has existed throughout humanity existence. (There are positive and negative choices)
6. Evil, suffering, conflict exists.
7. Goodness and kindness exist.
8. Desire for contentment, happiness, love, pleasure and purpose and meaning in life exists.

Out of all those, I think most people can relate most with number 8 – we all desire purpose and meaning and happiness in life.

But why?

Why do we yearn for happiness? Why do teenagers spend all their high-school years and part of their early college years trying to “find themselves” and “discover what their purpose is” in life? Why am I, a 33-year-old wife of 12 years and mother of 4 still trying to figure out what I’m “supposed to do” with my life?

In the world, especially this American world I live in, everyone is focused – obsessed – with their own accomplishments. It starts with grades, then what college you get into, what job you get hired at, what bonuses and raises you earn, who you marry, how many kids you have (or don’t have), which school your kids gets accepted into, what grades he/she gets, what job they get, who they marry, how many grandkids you get (or don’t), etc, etc, etc. You get the picture.

Even I fall into this trap all the time. That’s what Facebook status updates are for, right? Who needs a car bumper when you can plaster your accomplishments all over social media? 😉

It’s almost like we are trying to achieve something big in life, we’re always moving and trying to get…somewhere, or something.

Since the beginning of our human history, heck of the whole universe, creation itself has been in a constant motion of progression and development and movement toward something bigger, better, more.

In Broken Gods: Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, by Dr. Greg Popcack (whom I interviewed and reviewed here), tells us the reason for our constant longing for more is because we are meant for more. We yearn for perfection because that is what we are made for.

And this is why we are never satisfied. Even when we think we are. We’re not.

Why?

Our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you. The Confessions of St. Augustine

I really can’t say it any better than him.

People want to matter. They want to believe that what they do here, now, is not for nothing. We want to believe that we live for something bigger than ourselves. We want to believe something bigger than ourselves exists. We want this because, deep down, we know it does exist.

In the book (that I reviewed and interviewed), The Gospel of Happiness: Rediscover Your Faith Through Spiritual Practice and Positive Psychology , Dr. Christopher Kaczor delves deeper into the psychological answers to my questions and explains, using secular and empirical psychological evidence, how faith in God intersects with our human longing for meaning and happiness.

Faith enhances meaning…because the person of faith sees what they are doing as making a difference not just in the short term, but also for all eternity…If people do not believe in God, they can view their contributions as making only a limited difference, which will soon be forgotten and obliterated as time passes…Someday even all the history books will be gone as the sun expands into a red giant entirely destroying the earth.

These are the things I think about when I stare into the vast endlessness of the universe.

Or when I finally accomplish a great feat and stand in the glory of accomplishment and the beauty of creation.

When I feel the jabs of a tiny human being developing inside me and when I hold this person in my arms and fall into the deep mysteries hidden in their eyes,

Or when I witness the unbreakable bonds of humanity and simple kindness across generations, ages, prejudices, and untold suffering.

The meaning of life is not here in the present moment and it is not in our own accomplishments and temporal satisfactions: We discover life’s meaning when we transcend ourselves and our present moment in time and find the One who transcends all the now’s, all the yesterday’s, and all the tomorrow’s.

This. This is what it’s all about. This is why I believe in God. He gives me Life. He gives me Love. He gives me a purpose: To pursue and attain Happiness – forever In Him.