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Don Richardson in his book Eternity in Their Hearts writes about a God sized hole
which yearns to be filled. This statement comes from Ecclesiastes in the Old
Testament.
It is beautiful how God has done everything at the right time. He has put a sense of eternity in
people¶s minds. Yet, mortals still can¶t grasp what God is doing from the beginning to the end of
time. Ecclesiastes 3:11
The witness of people who venture into ³savage´ territory is that ther e is invariably a
god narrative within the peoples culture. The deity may be very different to the ³True
God´ as we Know Him and the culture may be short many of the icons that we are
familiar with such as sheep and shepherds, mercy, forgiveness etc. What they do
have is an understanding of their world as expressed through their social interactions
and their faith/ religious dogma. The trick is to portray our faith dogma in terms of
their experiences,
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  God removed the ³God
spirit´ from man after the Fall. This is the hole that Richardson was writing about. If
you will, God took His spirit from man but significantly did not replace it with
something else. hence there is something missing in everyone¶s live.
We are meant for relationship, how many love songs can each of us recall about
³Something missing´, until we find someone who meets our needs we are incomplete
then when we find that person whom we believe will be there for us we feel a sense
of completion.
It is not until sometime later, usually, that we discover that there is still a hole, a God
sized hole, in our lives. We do not always make that association and set out to find
something to fill it, this is the same as the ³primitive tribal´ exper ience.
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 We have a mandate as
Believers to Go Tell and Make Disciples: from Jesus. He has given us this
bargaining chip in that we know the One who will fill the vacuum in the lives of
others. Just like the missionary we can use this narrative to build bridges of
understanding that are appropriate to the understanding and experience of the
people we come across.
It does no one any good if a jackaroo is given a learned apologia of the death of
Christ, usually, and an intellectual will probably have little connection with Jesus
parable of the lost sheep. We need to know our people and deal with them
appropriately
Finally returning to Richardson, he writes in Peace Child about two tribes whose
fundamental was treachery and who also held Judas Iscariot a role model. The tribes
came to blows and he forced a peace treaty but how was this to be guaranteed? The
solution was that the two chiefs were to produce a child who would live with the other
tribe: the peace was to continue as long as the children lived. So for these people
Jesus became God¶s Peace Child.
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