If you are a guide on a sightseeing trip, and you know that the people are longing to enjoy the beauty - even willing to risk their lives to see it - and you come upon some breathtaking ravine, then you should show it to them and urge them to enjoy it. Well, the human race does in fact crave the experience of awe and wonder. And there is no reality more breathtaking than Jesus Christ. He is not safe, but He is stunning.
God has put eternity in man's mind and filled the human heart with longing. But we know not what we long for until we see the breathtaking God... Hence, the famous prayer of Saint Augustine: "You made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace till they rest in you."
When our back is to the breathtaking beauty of God, we cast a shadow on the earth and fall in love with it. But it does not satisfy.
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them... For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not yet visited. ~C.S. Lewis
The Dangerous Duty of Delight
by John Piper