Lifted Up: The Longing Of Your Heart

There are moments in life when everything feels loud.

Not just noisy — but overwhelming. Moments when the world presses in from every side, when your senses are overloaded, when you’re moving fast because you have to, not because you want to. Moments when you’re surrounded by people, yet strangely alone.

One of those moments for our family happened years ago.

Liz, the three boys, and I were traveling to Europe. We had landed in London after a long overnight flight. We were tired in that bone-deep way that only travel can produce — that mixture of jet lag, hunger, and mental fog where you’re technically awake but not fully present.

The boys, on the other hand, were wide-eyed and buzzing with excitement.

Ryan — five years old — was already asking when he could see the Queen. Eric — four — was asking about breakfast. Cocoa Puffs, specifically. Loren was just one year old, asleep in Liz’s arms, blissfully unaware of passports, jet bridges, or customs lines.

We were moving quickly through Heathrow Airport. The terminal was packed. Announcements echoed overhead. Wheels clattered across tile floors. People rushed in every direction — business travelers, families, airport staff, carts zipping past with drivers shouting warnings as they weaved through the crowd.

Liz was carrying Loren. Ryan was staggering along, trying to be helpful, loaded down with his brother’s carry-on bags, a Game Boy tucked under his arm. Eric was doing what three-year-olds do — drifting between holding Ryan’s hand and grabbing onto mine, sometimes walking, sometimes half-running to keep up.

And then — suddenly — he wasn’t there. One moment Eric was beside us. The next moment, he was gone. Liz and I stopped dead in our tracks.

Time didn’t slow down. It sped up. My heart began pounding. We turned in circles, scanning faces, calling his name — but our voices were swallowed by the noise of the terminal. The crowd kept moving. People kept rushing past us. No one else even noticed.

If you’re a parent, you know that feeling. That instant, hollow drop in your chest. The flash of fear that comes before reason can catch up. The unspoken thought you don’t even want to finish forming.

Then — cutting through the chaos, piercing through the roar of the airport — we heard it.

“Mom! Dad!” That cry rose above everything.

We turned toward the sound, pushing through the crowd, following it desperately — and there he was. Standing there, frightened, searching, calling out with everything he had.

The relief came all at once. Laughter. Tears. Gratitude.

We scooped him up and hugged him like we were never going to let go. Then we kept moving — together again.

In that moment, Eric wasn’t thinking about toys, or breakfast, or sightseeing. He wasn’t worried about the Pop Tarts or Cocoa Puffs or what came next.

His heart was focused on one thing. To be found. And that moment reveals something profoundly true about all of us.

Beneath the noise of our lives — beneath the schedules, the expectations, the striving, the coping — every human heart has a cry. Sometimes it’s loud. Sometimes it’s buried deep. Sometimes it’s muffled by distraction or success or pain.

But it’s always there.

The cry says: “God, where are You?” “Do You see me?” “Do I belong?” “Am I known?” “Am I Yours?”

That cry — that longing — is not weakness. It is the deepest truth about us.

Scripture tells us that God has set eternity in the human heart. That means we were designed with a longing that nothing temporary can fully satisfy.

We were made with an ache that points beyond itself. We were created not just to survive — but to belong.

Today, I want you to hear this clearly: That longing you feel — the restlessness, the hunger, the quiet ache — is not evidence that something is wrong with you.

It is evidence that you were made for God.

--- Part One: Every Heart Is Searching

Whether we realize it or not, we spend much of our lives searching.

We search for meaning.

We search for peace.

We search for love.

We search for something that feels solid enough to stand on and gentle enough to rest in.

Sometimes that search is obvious. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes we don’t even know what we’re looking for — only that something is missing.

Have you ever walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and just stood there staring?

The shelves are full. Milk. Condiments. Leftovers from a meal you barely remember eating. But you don’t reach for anything. You just stand there, door open, light shining out, wondering why nothing looks right.

You’re hungry — but you can’t name what for.

That’s life for so many people. We’re restless, but we don’t know why. We’re dissatisfied, but we can’t explain it. We feel full, yet strangely empty. So we open door after door, hoping one of them will finally contain what we’re looking for.