"We are never more alive than when we are dealing with God. And there's a sense in which we aren't alive at all in the uniquely human sense of alive until we're dealing with God...

We can't be human without God. That's what Christians believe. We believe that this human life is a great gift, that every part of it is designed by God and therefore means something, that every part of it is blessed by God and therefore to be enjoyed, but every part is accompanied by God and therefore workable.

We can't get away from God; He's there whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not. We can refuse to participate in God; we can act as if God were not our designer, provider, and covenant presence. But when we refuse, we are less; our essential humanity is less. Our lives are diminished and impoverished.

And it's just this sense of lessness that gives us an important clue to understanding ourselves. We are aware of something we need or lack most of the time. We are not complete. We are not fully human. The sense of being unfinished is pervasive and accounts for a great deal that’s distinctive in us humans. We then attempt to complete ourselves by getting more education or more money, going to another place or buying different clothes, searching out new experiences. The Christian Gospel tells us that in and under and around all of these incompletions is God: God is Who we need; the God hunger, the God thirst is the most powerful drive in us. It is far stronger than all of the drives of sex, power, security, and fame put together.

Eugene Peterson, Leap Over A Wall, pp. 5-6.