Restless and Longing

God has made everything beautiful in its time; also He has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11

God has reminded me in a fresh way this week that restlessness and longing are essential traits of my heart and yours. That can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing. It is good when the object of that restlessness and longing is the Lord Christ and his kingdom and his righteousness. It is bad when it is anything less. God has designed us with a heart-sickness. We try to satisfy this insatiable longing with vacations, food, visual stimulation, music, sports, alcohol, hallucinogens, and on, and on, and on...

Almost everywhere you look the grass is greener than where you stand. This is nothing less than the Spirit of God beckoning you and me to come to him! And yet we turn away from him again and again to a new toy, a movie, an automobile, a tanning bed, or the beach.

Jeremiah said it like this:

My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

The drugs and alcohol can’t keep you from waking up to reality and your messed-up relationships. The tan looks so artificial and sure does fade quickly. Within a few weeks, maybe just days, that new toy becomes boring and commonplace. What does this mean? Is there any satisfaction there to be found in the greener grass for which we long? No. We have been deceived by the image. We don’t really want the high provided by the drug or the alcohol. We want the eternal reality of bliss behind the buzz. We don’t really want the sweet and cool refreshment of water in the blistering heat of a parched desert. The water is just a picture of the eternal reality underneath it. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. It flows with the water of life, bright as crystal from the throne of God and from the Lamb. You were made for God. The hunger and thirst of your life which cannot be satisfied by anything in this world is God’s constant pleading with you to remember that you were made for him.

Jesus has something to say about this universal unquenchable yearning:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. And at another place: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Jesus says that those who will be satisfied in the end are those who crave the mercy to be merciful, the grace to be gracious, the purity to be pure, the holiness to be holy – the very righteousness of Christ himself manifested in his body.

Don’t get involved in religious activities. And don’t settle for the meager satisfaction of just being a millionaire.