BP23
Humans are hungry. We are hungry for food, for meaning in life, for emotional closeness and love, for sexual intimacy (as opposed to lust). We hunger to belong, to be seen, to be known, to win, to conquer obstacles. Typically, we have a deep desire to live.
Yes, humans are driven by hunger and thirst and desire.
Desire, I believe, is hard-wired in us by our Creator. He only asks us to keep our desires between the riverbanks of His loving plan for our deepest joy.
Hunger. Desire. These words have explanatory power to describe what motivates much of human behavior, but they are limited. There is something even deeper in the soul than these two things. I call it The Longing.
I have a clear recollection of my first encounter with The Longing when I was sixteen years old. I was in the Boundary Water Canoe Area (BWCA) on the border of Minnesota and Canada with six friends and two guides. As part of our wilderness experience, our guides assigned each of us an island for a day so we could be alone to meditate and listen to whatever voice we were supposed to hear.
As it turned out, we were short one island, so I got stuck spending my meditation time in a canoe. The only thing I remember about this experience was obviously poignant since I recall it clearly to this day. I was paddling around an island and entered a small cove. I accidentally bumped my paddle against the side of the aluminum canoe. The sound that was produced was followed by an echo.
Looking for some distraction to break up the monotony of the solo canoe drudgery, I began calling out, “Hello. Hello.” Each time I spoke, a voice that sounded like mine but was somehow different echoed my words back to me. At some juncture during this mindless pastime, something struck me–out of nowhere.
I had a vague realization that I longed for someone to hear me and respond to my greeting. The Longing was deeper than a hunger to hear from my friends. It wasn’t a SETI thing where I desired to receive a message from some extra-terrestrial outside my galaxy.
I couldn’t clearly identify my longing, but it was deeper than an ocean trench and higher than the clouds. It felt a lot like an ache in my soul.
Besides The Longing, I sensed a bottomless shaft of aloneness within me that I would never be able to explain–even to my closest friends.
I’ll never forget my longing that day in a canoe on the waters of the BWCA. It was so intense. It was so undefinable . . .
Hunger, desire and The Longing are part of my life today. My clients have helped me to understand and identify these universal yearnings from their own journeys as have my experiences with my own heart.
So, why do we hunger for things in this world? Maybe because they make us feel good, they seem to fill our chronic emptiness, they give purpose to our lives, and sometimes they draw us closer to others in this lonely universe.
What are the things that feed our hunger? What are the desires that drive us to get up every morning?
The list includes things like a new car; an amazing job you thought you would never get or that you had been anticipating for a decade; an inheritance of $750,000; the purchase of a dream house or a cabin on the lake; your team winning the Super Bowl; the birth of a child; an engagement followed by a dream wedding; a vacation to a distant exotic location; a favorite meal like Salmon Wellington accompanied by a fine wine and followed by tiramisu for dessert; sex with a partner that makes you feel like you’ve experienced a taste of heaven; a high from drugs or alcohol.
Some people might even settle for the anticipation of binge-watching a favorite series on TV, or sleeping, or living for the weekend.
I have summarized these desires under a hierarchy I call the 12M—the twelve things (not an exhaustive list) humans are driven to pursue in this lifetime. Items 3-12 are Mission (job/career), Mates (friends), Mate, Mattering on the stage of history, Money, Munchkins (children), Mercury (vehicle), Manse (house), Material things, Manic pleasure. The order of these desires may vary from person to person and some may not even be relevant to your life.
All ten of items M3-12 satisfy something within us. But how deeply and for how long? How many weeks or months pass before the new car or house becomes mundane? How long does the sexual union last or the euphoria from drugs or the buzz from alcohol? Hopefully, mission, mates, mate and munchkins bring a more enduring happiness and satisfaction to you. But if you’re like me, none of these things touch The Longing.
So, what is The Longing that runs beneath the surface of our lives like a subterranean river that is never seen but always there? Have you ever had an encounter with this deeper thirst, a yearning for something that lies beyond the material world? It is here that we encounter M1 and 2—Master and Maturity (a deep desire to grow emotionally, spiritually, and relationally).
These first two longings of the 12M are primary. If these two are not pursued first, a person will attempt to squeeze from M3-12 an enduring joy they were not intended to give and indeed cannot. They will be idolized and will ultimately prove to be empty. Despair will follow.
Addressing M3-12, King Solomon wisely observed, “Whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:10,11).
The truth about the objects of our hunger and desire in this world is that they are not designed to satisfy The Longing. Some will bring us merely fleeting pleasures (especially if they are driven by the flesh and not the Spirit) and some will fill us enough so that we might be tempted to settle without pursuing the quest for The Longing.
Akin to golden handcuffs, they may provide just enough pleasure to distract us from the greatest good and keep us shackled to lesser things. How tragic in our pursuit of desire (see the first of the Two Things in BP13) to settle for one raindrop instead of all the oceans in the universe.
A pessimist philosopher by the name of Arthur Schopenhauer had even harsher words than Solomon about being marooned in this world if we must settle only for pleasures M3-12. In his book, On the Suffering of the World, he writes, “In the first place, no man is happy but strives his whole life long after a supposed happiness which he seldom attains, and even if he does it is only to be disappointed with it.”
Elsewhere he writes, “What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams, and we search in vain for their original. Much would have been gained if, through timely advice and instruction, young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.”
The difference between Solomon and Schopenhauer is that the former believed that there is a God in this apparently meaningless universe while the latter did not embrace the existence of a deity who brought truth and reality to his anti-reality world.
Solomon believed that there was a mammoth cavern inside the human heart that only God could fill while Schopenhauer believed that there was nothing in this universe that would bring ultimate joy and meaning. For him, M1 and M2 did not exist. Pursuing God was certainly not the answer to the suffering in this disheartening existence on planet earth.
Have you ever gazed up into the expansive sky on a clear, moonless night in the middle of Beaver Meadows near Bear Lake in the Rocky Mountain National Park and feel a shiver run up your spine?
Did you ever wake up in the middle of the night sensing that someone unseen was in the room?
When was the last time you were with a dying person and witnessed them taking their last breath? Did you sense that you were standing on the edge of eternity with one foot in this world and one in the next?
Did anything fill you with such great excitement that were jumping up and down only to feel the elation wane within hours or days?
I view all these experiences as evidence that there is something beyond this world that was designed to fill us because nothing in this world is capable of doing that.
Two months after I returned from the canoe trip to the BWCA, The Longing I experienced met its source. I had an encounter with The Master of the universe—the one who made it all. The most amazing thing was that I wasn’t even looking for Jesus since I had walked away from the church months earlier. However, He pursued me and directed me like a wild bull into a chute where I had no other choice but to run toward Him. All other options fell away.
M1 became the bedrock of my past, present and future. Having a personal relationship with the Master ordered all the other eleven Ms rightly. As Matthew 6:33 basically says, Seek God first and all the lesser things will be added to you. I stopped hoping that hunger and desire would ultimately fill my deepest yearnings and realized that The Longing could only be satisfied by knowing Jesus.
Once I knew Him, I soon discovered that M2—maturity—was the next priority in line. My Mission, my Mates, my Mate, my Munchkins, Mattering in this world, and Material things were all secondary to maturity–to becoming like Jesus. Love, servanthood, humility, joy, peace, faithfulness, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control became the character attributes to which I aspired.
As I became older and grew deeper in my walk with God, I also learned that being rightly related to Jesus made M3-12 much sweeter. I put less pressure on my spouse to fulfill my deepest longings and on my children to make me look like a good parent and on material things and pleasures to bring me happiness. Once the hub of the wheel was in place, all the spokes fit into their proper place.
A parable in the Bible addresses M1. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44).
I was given grace to find that treasure that was hidden from my blind eyes. Like the man in the parable, I, too, knew that it was more precious to me than anything else in the world. I was willing to give up everything else I hungered for because The Longing is about eternal things while my desire was for temporary things.
What is the applications of The Longing to the psycho-spiritual-relational dynamic that DTFL routinely addresses?
Don’t settle for less. Always remember that someone is at the core of life, not something. No, never something. Know that the skyscraper of a consistent joy is erected on the bedrock of Jesus Christ.
Not on religion. Not on fleeting material pleasures. Not on brief elation (like when—if–the Vikings ever win a Super Bowl). Not on your munchkins or your mate or your mission.
Life must begin with the God of the universe for everything else to take its proper place, for the jigsaw puzzle of life to come together into the clear picture it was designed to be from the beginning.
Even if you don’t realize it yet, you were made for a loving relationship with someone who will never leave you; never love you less; never change in His character; always see you in the light or in the dark; know you better than you know yourself and still love you unconditionally; always defend you in the courtroom of life and, if you are guilty, will remind you that He already paid your penalty and simply asks that you embrace Him as your Master; and will escort you across the river of death and revive you on the other side.
So, if your heart is ever stirred by an echo or a dream or a movie or at a funeral or as you stare up into the starry night, don’t dismiss it. Listen closely and you just might sense The Longing that points to the purpose of it all—The Longing to abide in His love and to eagerly anticipate a reunion with Him one day.
The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity