Dernière mise à jour: 4 avril
God filled the emptiness in me
Kenny’s testimony
In 1996, I left Mauritius, my native island, in search of a better life. What I didn’t know was that I was going to discover something I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams! Here is my story.
I was born in a village of about seven hundred people, called Bonne-Mère, where everyone knew each other. I grew up in a Tamil family of Hindu religion. Not very religious, I followed the many rituals in a traditional way, to please the gods and have a clear conscience. During the periods of deprivation and fasting, I felt good, better than at other times. I also hoped that the gods would fill the emptiness I felt inside of me, even though I didn’t really know what I was looking for.
I felt joy in helping people, especially through my job as an electronics technician, which allowed me to help them out, but I wanted to do more. I especially wanted to improve the lives of poor and marginalized people. I had compassion for others, but I myself was empty! Maybe I was trying to fill that hole with the love people showed me every time I rescued them? 
In any case, I couldn’t help myself! In my desperation, I tried to escape from my increasingly unbearable inner reality, drowning myself in alcohol every weekend, and other excesses that came with it.
Yet, objectively, I had everything I needed to be happy: a promising career, a family, friends… but in my eyes, my life had no meaning. At 27, I decided to leave and seek happiness elsewhere.
I ended up in the cosmopolitan city of London. And there, within three months, everything changed. I could still feel the emptiness deep inside me and I felt it all the more because I was far from my family, in this capital of 7 million people. I was going through extremely dark times in my life story. I couldn’t see a way out. One thing became more and more clear to me: 
I could not rely on myself or others to find peace. It had to come from elsewhere. But since I had already tried all that had to do with the gods and it hadn’t worked, I was wondering where to turn! It was crucial that I talk to someone about what I was going through…
At that time, I discovered in my mailbox a flyer with the title: “An ear to listen to you”. Exactly what I needed. I was so desperate that I left without reading the timetable information. It was a 5 minutes walk from my house; when I got there, of course, it was closed.
But luckily for me, Pauline, the manager of this place, had just come by to collect some things. I insisted that she’d take some time with me, and she accepted. I told her how much I regretted the stupid things I had done and that I wanted to start a new life. She listened to me carefully, then she told me that I couldn’t change my past, but that I could change the present!
Pauline told me about God’s love for humanity and His desire: to reconcile people with Him. Because of the separation that happened at the beginning of time, human beings have turned out to be fundamentally bad, because we are tainted by sin (the part of us that is so dark).
God had to give Himself, in His Son Jesus, to redeem us from our faults. If we understand and accept what God did for us by dying on the cross, we can be forgiven and therefore be at peace with Him.
At that, I was amazed. It was so different from anything I had heard and understood until then! My religion had taught me to obey in order to be accepted by the gods.
But now, I understood that it was quite the opposite: I was accepted by a God who already loved me!
Suddenly, I wanted to submit to such a God! I had heard and accepted the Good News that is the Gospel! I understood that the work of Jesus on the cross consoles us in our suffering, because He knew suffering. I understood that His resurrection offers us hope and the certainty of our own resurrection, therefore a better life, one without tears. I now had a deep conviction, that of Life after death… instead of a great emptiness!
This message met me at the perfect time, given my situation. It made sense and I wanted to live it. Something overwhelming also happened that day for me. Pauline invited me to pray: I presented my faults to Jesus, I asked Him for forgiveness so that He could forgive me and lead me to the truth.
Pauline gave me a Bible and invited me to come back. The adventure with Jesus had just begun… and it’s been going on for over two decades now! God in Jesus filled and fills the emptiness in me.
I found meaning in my life. I know where I come from, in the sense that God is my Father, He created me to have a relationship with Him. And I know why I am on earth: it’s so, as it happened for me with Pauline, by meeting me, others can know God through what the Bible says and so that they can see Him in who I am and who I am becoming thanks to the Holy Spirit working in me.
Of course, sometimes, I still disappoint Him with my behavior and I am sad about it, but I know that He forgives me. My relationship with Him does not depend on what I do or don’t do, but on what Jesus did. And it is through the work of His Son that God the Father looks at me and can declare me righteous.
Moreover, I know where I am going: I have the hope of a life with God, for eternity, where He will wipe away every tear, where there will be no more death or sadness or suffering… as can be read in the last book of the Bible: «He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will there be mourning, nor outcry, nor pain» (Rev. 21:4).
And now, more than ever, I still have compassion for people, but I feel and know that I am equipped to genuinely help them. I can’t help them out, but I can lead them to the greatest Helper of all time: Jesus!
Do you want to find meaning in your life?
We do not discover it in a religion, whatever it may be, but in a relationship with Jesus who tells us that He is the light, the resurrection, the truth, the way and the life.
Unlike religions in general, Jesus does not tell us what steps to follow or which mountain to climb… He simply tells us that He is THE Way! Trying to fill your inner emptiness with something other than God Himself will never bring peace, not real peace, the kind that only Jesus can give, as He Himself declares (John 14).
St. Augustin wrote: «O my God, you created us for you, and our hearts are always troubled and oppressed until they find rest in you.»
Blaise Pascal took up this idea by saying:
«Man once knew real happiness, of which there is now only an empty trace that he tries to fill in vain with all that surrounds him, searching in empty things, for the help he can not find in those that are present. But all are inadequate, because the abyss can only be filled by something that is infinite and immutable, that is to say, God himself.»
God filled the emptiness in him.
Will you let Jesus
fill your bottomless abyss?
Kenny