"In several of his writings the Christian author C.S. Lewis explores this phenomenon of human longing or yearning -- what the Germans call Sehnsucht (ZANE-zoocht)...Lewis observes that when we have it, we are seeking union with something from which we are separated. For example, we want to be reunited with a happy time or a lovely place or a good friend...What's remarkable is that these longings are unfulfillable. We cannot merge with the music we love. We cannot climb inside nature...We may want a good career or a family or a particular kind of life, and these things may come to us. But if so, they will not fill all our niches because we want more than these things can give...something in us keeps saying "not this" or "still beyond..."
The truth is that nothing in this earth can finally satisfy us. Much can make us content for a time, but nothiing can fill us to the brim. The reason is that our final joy lies "beyond the walls of the world," as J.R.R. Tolkien put it. Ultimate beauty comes not from a lover or a landscape or a home, but only through them. These earthly things are solid goods, and we naturally relish them. But they are not our final good...
God has made us for himself. Our sense of God runs in us like a stream, even though we divert it toward other objects. We human beings want God even when we think that what we really want is a green valley, or a good time from our past, or a loved one. Of course we do want these things and persons, but we also want what lies behind them.
(--Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God's World)
Look there's the world. What a luscious sight, what a candy dream. I want my fill. Let me have a piece, let me take a dive....Every day is the same, I choose life in the flames. And it seems that I can't escape. When I eat of this world I'm left hungry again.
You can take a sip, but you'll be thirsty again. You can drink with your tongue, you can taste with your lies. You can take a sip but you'll be thirsty again. When you drink with your heart, when you see with your eyes, All your casual talk, all your glorious lives. When you taste it for real then He will quench it away.
--Derrick Harris, "Cup of Life"
2 comments:
Very nice reflection. I definitely know the yearning you refer to...
Yah. I've been both humbled and encouraged lately, reading Plantinga's book, to realize that sometimes I don't even recognize that my longings can only be filled with God. It's a good reminder...
Not that the longings for "things lesser" is necessarily bad. It's just that they often mask the deeper longings. Sometimes we just need to name our longings for what they are.
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