Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4

            Just yesterday I passed a church sign that had a message board reading "ALL DESIRES ARE NOT MEANT TO BE SATISFIED". Now I think I know what they meant to say, but the way they said it made it confusing and could have been understood in the opposite way meant. What they likely meant to say was "Not all desires are meant to be satisfied", and that I'll agree with. But the way the sign was worded is the message too many people hear from the church in general. Whether it is actually what we mean or not, the message sent (or at least heard) is this... "Desires are bad... resist them!"

            Now don't think I'm going off the deep end, or saying that we should follow whatever desires we have, but I long for the day when the world hears the message of the church as inviting and life-affirming rather than harsh and life-limiting. How about this message... "God has desires for you... to experience fullness of life!" or "You know those desires you have, guess who put them there? God did, for your good!"

            If people had a more positive picture of the God who loves and cares for them, one in whom they could trust, then hearing that there are some desires that God doesn't want them to fulfill wouldn't sound limiting, but rather would sound like the true freedom it is. Anyway, all these thoughts I had after seeing that sign brought to memory how Ronald Rolheiser, in his book The Holy Longing, points out that desire burns within us all, and it is the way we are created by God. He calls it our fundamental dis-ease. Listen to the words of his opening...

       It is no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, it would seem, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things, and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated, and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction.

       Put more simply, there is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. We are not easeful human beings who occasionally get restless, serene persons who once in a while are obsessed by desire. The reverse is true. We are driven persons, forever obsessed, congenitally dis-eased, living lives, as Thoreau once suggested, of quiet desperation, only occasionally experiencing peace. Desire is the straw that stirs the drink.

            Rolheiser later says "Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire." I think he is right on. In Christian circles we talk about that empty spot within us that only God can fill. Our need then, ultimately, is to come to trust God enough to allow him to fill it. When we only say we have trusted God, but act as if we need to meet our deepest needs ourselves, then our desires lead us toward pain and destruction of life rather than fullness of life. When we think it is up to us to meet our needs, our desires become self-centered. Our desires for money, power or relationships become driven by the need for security in ourselves and all these things (people included) become objects to be used, rather than the building blocks of a healthy life of shalom (right-relatedness) that God desires for us all.

            May we come to truly trust God, and learn to "delight ourselves in the LORD and (allow him to) give us the desires of our heart". And may true peace, shalom, be ours.

Pastor Carl