Do you have a void?

In my reading tonight, I ran across something that Blaise Pascal once penned. I will not share my own thoughts this evening, but will share with you what he said as there is great depth and magnitude in his very words.

All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may emply, they all strive towards this goal....Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions. A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change, really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining the good by our own efforts. But example teaches us very little....

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself. ¹

1. Blaise Pascal, Pensees (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968), 174-75