I feel this wanting, this seeking, this yearning every day, don’t you? The search for what will fully quench the contentment I require, like a silent invisible quest never stopping to rest.
I can’t be totally alone; I think Asaph was trying to express the same with his words when he felt like a beast before the Lord:
Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Much of my waking minutes spent pursuing in some form or fashion but…
Nothing I eat or drink satisfies my desire.
Nothing I see or hear
Nothing I hold dearly loved or tightly clenched
No pleasant aroma, no comfort to my flesh
No thought I think, no wandering daydream
No plans, no vision
Nothing I can ever imagine in my wildest imaginings
Not even the next breath I take… or the next
Not a lifetime of heartbeats
I’m bound up in the limits of my flesh trying to express a desire that was designed in the deepest depths of me, when “my frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.”
Nothing I look for here can ever satiate.
Yet my longing feels weak and small and inefficient when it discerns that only You could ever satisfy it; even the deepest of those feelings melt away into nothing upon realizing that even the strongest desire itself is anemic compared to the Satisfaction of it.
That’s why my flesh fails, my heart fails… fails to express, fails to grasp, fails to desire enough for the True Desire. You, God, are the only One who can strengthen my heart and my longing and my satisfaction and the right amount of enough to want You sufficiently. You Only can craft and fuel my desire for You to make it worthy of Your satisfying and fulfilling of it. Without You, nothing was made that was made.
There is none upon earth I desire besides You. While I’m restrained for these moments by skin and bones, my flesh and my heart fail in yearning and awaiting. But You, God, are the strength of my everything, inside and out, and my perfect sufficiency, now and forever.
Nothing I desire compares with You.
~~~
Psalm 73:25-26
Psalm 139:15-16
John 1:3
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