Love and Longing

Happy New Year! Sunday (yesterday) was the first day of the Christian calendar. The year begins four weeks before Christmas with the season of Advent. Advent is an opportunity to step into our longings and desires for something greater than ourselves … something greater than our hearts can contain. So, we spend a month living the story of waiting for a Messiah. There is an element of remembering the first advent (coming) and a reminder than there is a second advent (coming) of Messiah.

Part of the beauty of living in our longings is that we taste desire. Desire that is unfulfilled is part of the adventure, and part of the joy of knowing Christ. I found the following quote by author Peter Rollins especially insightful in terms of reflecting on Advent:

“We miss people we like when they are absent. But those we love, we miss all the more when they are present for their presence reminds us that their inner world is an untamed, uncharted universe we have yet to explore.”

As we truly love others and delight in them, we aren’t finally satisfied but we long to know the depths of who they are. Even more, as we experience the presence of God, we are propelled deeper into the desire of knowing and touching the Infinite One. Consider those tastes of the divine that you experience each day and let them propel you into longing for more. There is nothing about God that should leave us merely or finally satisfied for He is Infinite and even in eternity, we will live in the continual adventure of growing to know and love Him more deeply. Desire and love and not destinations but avenues for living according to our created design.

~ by Ted Wueste on November 28, 2011.