Longing

There’s a feeling I get in my gut after I say goodbye to old friends that I don’t get to see very often. It’s similar to the feeling I get occasionally when my wife and I or my friend and I are trying to express what’s going on deep within our hearts but there’s some invisible disconnect that makes it seemingly impossible. Which is similar to the almost depressing feeling I get when nothing around me really seems to hold my interest or to completely satisfy my deepest desires.

It’s the feeling that something is missing, or at least, not as it’s supposed to be.

Whether it’s longing for a day when everyone I’ve ever loved will be reunited in one place to never leave again, looking forward to a time when mine and others’ social inadequacies will no longer prevent us from knowing each other fully and being fully known, or finding complete joy and satisfaction not in what I’m able to accomplish or the things I own but in relationship with others – in this moment, life is not as it should be – yet.

Call it a moment of depression, laziness, mourning, longing, or whatever else, but I think it’s something deep within my being that is sensing that either I’m not who I was created to be, the world is not as it’s supposed to be, or a combination of the two.

And it’s true. I haven’t yet fully realized who I’m supposed to be and whose I’m supposed to be. And at any given moment, I may be utterly failing at living in what God has declared to be true about me. That I am His son, that I am fully loved regardless of my skills or what I can do for Him, and that my deepest needs and desires are met in the person of Jesus Christ.

And the world is certainly not as it was created to be. It doesn’t take much more than a quick glimpse at the front page of a newspaper to figure that out.

Something is missing, or not as it’s supposed to be.

Yet that feeling of insufficiency or of yearning for something more is an opportunity to hope.

Hope that things will change. Hope that I will become who I was created to be. Hope that the earth will one day function as it’s supposed to.

Hope for Heaven.

As painful as those realizations of inadequacy, loneliness, or dissatisfaction may be, it gives us the opportunity to hope and long for Heaven. Fortunately, I think if we had any real sense of the glory and the riches of Heaven, the divide between Heaven and earth would appear exponentially greater and the pain of longing would be too much to bear.

Even though my mind can hardly fathom the majesty of Heaven and being face to face with my Savior and King, I will likely have sufficient opportunity to hope for Heaven and long for Him.

Here’s to a night of longing. -CK