The tiresomeness of temporal life is a clue to the fact that we were meant for more. There are many good things here to enjoy, but if we pretend that this world is all we need, we cheat ourselves. We must admit that we yearn for greater fulfillments.
“In much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). As Pascal observed, “To know of God without knowing of man’s misery causes pride. To know of man’s misery without knowing of God causes despair.”
Resisting the tendency to focus on ourselves, we must learn to seek God, simply and contentedly. When we diligently do this, our reward will be God Himself and He will fill our deepest longings according to the design of His own love.
Combining the qualities of reverence and courage, love dares to seek God Himself. The deepest love in the human heart will settle for nothing less. It will not cease from its quest until it has found and known the Source from which it was created.
Sin destroys relationship, and since we were created for relationship, there is no impact of sin any more obvious than the deep, gnawing pain of isolation. In our broken world, there is no groaning more desperate than to be freed from our loneliness.
We instinctively reach out for concord with the Source of our being. We desire God because we were created to do so by God Himself, the God in whose image we were made. As our Beginning, He is the only perfect End toward which we were meant to move.
We long for God because we were created for Him, and when we honestly acknowledge this need, then we are ready to seek God. We must devote ourselves to finding Him, our most fervent hope being to come into His presence and enjoy His fellowship.
We long to be creatures who please our Creator. But as creatures broken by our own sin, we cannot make ourselves into what we long to be. So the thing that we desire is to be remade — by God Himself — into persons who please Him.
It is in the nature of the creature-Creator relationship that the Creator is to be worshiped. But it so happens that the God who created us is worthy of our reverence. And not only our reverence, but He is also worthy of our love.
We never refuse our God without breaking His heart, and in the end, that is what sin always comes down to: a refusal to accept God’s love. When we say no to Him, we are stubbornly saying no to the better things His love is longing to give us.
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