Galatians 4:8 - The Infinite Abyss

"But rather, then on the one hand, having not known God, you were slaves to the [ones][who] by nature are not gods."

-We think we’re in control, don’t we?  We believe we are masters of our fate, we’re in command, we make our choices.  But we are slaves... (or were, hopefully).  And we don't even know it.  Just like in the Matrix.  It is as Morpheus described it like this: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. It is the world that has been pulled over our eyes to blind us from the truth that we are all slaves, born into bondage, into a prison that we cannot taste or see or touch.  But ours is a prison for our souls.  It is the prison of the Infinite Abyss.

-"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. . . . This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.  What is it, then, that this desire [for happiness] and this inability [to find it] proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the comfort he does not receive from things present. . . . But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss [inside us] can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, by God himself." -Pascal

-The world, the nations and peoples of the world who do not know their Creator and live apart from Him are left to try and fill the infinite abyss in their hearts with something else, something created, something other than, less than, something (anything!) and all that which cannot ever fill or satisfy.  And most of us will spend our entire lives, slaving away, trying to fill the Abyss.  Stuff.  More stuff.  Barns and bigger barns to hold more stuff (observe the proliferation of what we call "storage units" and now the rise of tv shows about them!).  Food.  Fun.  Fitness.  Pleasure.  Sports and social media and smartphone apps.  Entertainment and travel and adventure.  Religion.  Spirits and spirituality.  To these do we devote ourselves (and yes, sadly, even believers do...).  To these we prostrate ourselves at the altar of desperation, empty, unsatisfied, unfulfilled.  Slaves to the unsated, grasping at so much cotton candy, broken cisterns which can hold no water.  And thus to these which are no gods we are enslaved, born to bow as sparks fly upward.  We cannot not bow.  The Abyss beckons us, relentlessly.  We learn to cope, try as we may with all our might to fill the yawning unfillable hole in our souls.  We learn these ways from our parents and perfect them alongside our peers - the people around us who are just as blind and desperate (and enslaved) as we.  The blind leading the blind, walking in darkness, stumbling around in a vain attempt to try and fill the chasmic gaping hole in our hearts.  Paul says to the Galatians, this is the way you were, back then.  Until...