Chasing What’s Missing: The Well, Casting Crowns

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by:  Staci Stallings

In my book, “Theirs is the Kingdom,” I chose a rainbow for the front cover.  Now I love rainbows.  They have always been a positive symbol for me, but in that book, we discuss the concept of Source and resources.

God is your Source, the One you go to for your approval, your worth, your acceptance.  If you try to make something else your source (you replace God with something else), what you are doing is trying to make a resource be your source, and it will not work.

So for example, let’s say that you have made success your source rather than God.  The only thing that makes you feel worthwhile is success.  If you have success, you’re great.  If you don’t, look out!

Here’s the problem with that.  I call it chasing rainbows.

If you’ve ever been around a rainbow, you know that they are beautiful, but they also move.  You cannot get to a rainbow.  When you try, it moves.

It’s the same with resources we try to make our source.  Think of the book “who moved my cheese?”  The problem is often not that someone moved the cheese, it’s rather that you got the cheese and then realized that didn’t “fix everything.”

The concept is embodied perfectly in this line from The Well by Casting Crowns:

“You can spend your whole life chasing what’s missing.”

If you feel you are chasing something that is missing inside you, and that something is not God, you’re in big trouble.  Why?  Because even if you get that thing, you’re going to be sorely disappointed to find that it doesn’t fill “what’s missing.”

I know.  I chased a LOT of rainbows.  I ran and I ran and I worked and I worked.  And sometimes I even got to a rainbow.  Then the competition was over, and I had won, and I was happy… for about ten minutes.  And then someone said, “Well, where are we going to eat?”  And life went on as if I had not gotten even close to the rainbow.

It is so frustrating!  You study for months or years.  You get the scholarship, cross the stage, turn the tassel, and then… life is right there waiting to remind you that there are new challenges, new mountains to climb and valleys to go through.  If you do this enough times, life might even convince you that it’s not worth it to go after the rainbows.  After all, it’s not going to change anything anyway.

But here’s a secret that I’ve learned… it’s not about the rainbows, it’s about the One Who put them there.  It’s not about resources but about the One Who gave them to you to use.  It’s not about the gift, it’s about the Giver.  If you forget that, trust me, life will be around to remind you very shortly.

So if you find yourself chasing what’s missing, understand, you are making the wrong things important, and it’s time to stop and reevaluate.  Re-value your life.  Re-value what you put value in and on.   That is, I think, why God allows us to chase what’s missing and be disappointed over and over again… so that when we finally figure it out and start hungering and thirsting for ONLY HIM, we understand how precious that really is.

Yes, they are right, “You can spend your whole life chasing what’s missing,” but with the Answer right here ready to fill that space, why would you want to?