How can we fill the hole in the soul? – In search of meaning and happiness
A Christian youth festival is more than just music by first-class musicians. Instead, we talk about the meaning of life and the question of whether there really could be a God who loves us.
Lindsay Leon is at the microphone in front and it doesn’t take long before she’s crying. “My father cheated on my mother and left the family. We were all devastated. I started to hate my father. I couldn’t bring myself to say the word forgiveness. Then I was sitting alone in a church and suddenly I saw in a flashback how often God had forgiven me. From one moment to the next, I found the strength to embrace my father again. Now we have a great family because God is real!” No one who experienced these 12 minutes could escape the impact of the report.
Matthias Rehder talks about his life. Dozens of students from the Colegio Diospi Suyana are standing in front of him. “My father was a professor at the university in Hamburg. I was still a child when my parents got divorced. Even as a teenager, I used to hang out on the Reeperbahn. I drank until I dropped with my friends. I was always searching for happiness and felt this hole in my soul. On 11/11/2022, I was sitting on a train in Hamburg and we were drinking. Suddenly a pretty girl sat at the table and talked about a personal God. She’s completely crazy, I thought. But two years later I became a Christian myself. God has filled the hole in me. I’m so happy that my life now has a purpose!”
No one can measure the true value of festivals. The young people are hungry and thirsty for peace, reconciliation and hope. “Gozo en los Andes” (Joy in the Andes) provides answers. If God is real, then we have a future. If the new atheists were right, everything would be pointless. One of the great French existentialists once said: “The only question I can’t answer is why I don’t actually put a bullet in my head!”
And Jesus Christ said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest!”
Of course, Dr. Klaus John told the story of Diospi Suyana to the packed amphitheatre. “When I was a little boy, I hung on my father’s leg before he went to sell bread in the suburbs of Wiesbaden in the afternoon. He then pulled me across the kitchen floor. It was great fun. Today I cling to the leg of Christ in a figurative sense. He is everything to me!” /KDJ
