Excerpts from "The Problem of Pain" by C.S. Lewis, from his chapter on "Heaven":
"There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words; but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life, and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of - something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut woood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all."
I wonder sometimes if the hurts and disappointments in life serve only (or at least partially) to remind us that we were not created for this life. We're always left with a deep-seated longing in our soul, because this is not what we were ultimately created for. In John 16, Jesus is preparing his disciples for his coming death...
"Truly, you will weep and mourn over what is going to happen to me, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy when you see me again. It will be like a woman experiencing the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives place to joy... You have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy." (John 16:20-22)
He seemed to say, "I know it will be difficult, but hang on... my death is not the end of the story. When you know the full story, you will have cause to rejoice."
"Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarify. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now." (I Corinthians 13:12)
So, I guess the lesson is... I don't know the full story. The unfulfilled desires of my heart serve to point me to Christ and the day I will be with Him. LORD, haste that day! In the meantime, help me keep my eyes focused securely on You.
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