Why Longing is Messy

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy

shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

(Psalm 23)

I slept hard, woke groggy, fumbled my way through a bowl of cereal, and managed the coffee maker. Then I spilled my entire first cup on the counter. All of it.

As I began sopping up the hot brown lake, I thought to myself, "This is exactly like attending to longings in a broken world. There is the promise, a wonderful aroma, and the promise is true. We haven't imagined it. God placed it there in the design of everything. But try to pour it into your cup and there the trouble starts."

I'm so tired because I chased a dream, a longing, a vision of how we could make a difference. It's been trouble all the way. Messy every day. For five years.

I keep spilling my longing all over the wrong places. I frequently burn myself. I've developed blisters and a few scars. My cup is cracked and chipped. Sometimes I despair that it will ever be right, that I will ever be right, that there is any point to trying.

Oh, we're doing okay. Our health is good. We love each other. Although I figure I may end with everything burned off me except the clothes on my back.

The vision wasn't for me. It was for others. I dared to say yes and I dared to start doing and it still hasn't worked. In fact, nothing has worked out like I thought it should. I'm at the point where I feel embarrassed and a bit silly. And exhausted. Which brings me back to this morning.

Why does life get so ugly when we try to do something in earnest? Why do I get so ugly? I told my husband that I think I have lost proper perspective. I'm over-reacting to every event. I'm inappropriate -- can that be a character quality? If it is, I have it.

Why?

Because I'm broken, too. I was designed to live in a beautiful garden in perfect fellowship with God and my loved ones. Without suffering or sorrow or meanness around me. But that is not where I live. And I am not what I would have been, because of my sin. The sinful habits in me hold on hard.

That's the rub, more than anything else. In the deep places of our hearts we long for the things we were made for in our original design: love, fellowship, significance, peace, goodness, joy, beauty, meaningfulness. The longing is not bad. It's good. But we live in a very different world than the one we were designed for. And we ourselves are no longer just as God made us. We have added the presence of sin which changes everything we touch.

If you've ever wondered why Jesus had to die on the cross, this is why: someone had to save us from ourselves; otherwise there was no hope of it. We were in no condition to rescue anyone. It's not just forgiveness that we need: we need a new life. Otherwise, we will drown in the froth of our own mixture of fleshliness and fear.

Fortunately, he has paid for our sins and carried us with him into death and life and glory beyond. It's all ours if we receive the gift. If we say, "Jesus, I receive you. Thank you for saving me. Please be my Lord."

And then the reconstruction begins.

For we are a glorious ruin, just as our world is a glorious ruin. Worth saving, but in need of drastic measures. We have "lost our truth," just as an old house does. We must submit to the skill of our Master Carpenter. I think our longings likewise must submit to his ministrations.

For we do not know what to do with our longings, where to take them, how to know if they are right. And when we begin moving in the direction of the deepest desires of our hearts, we will experience hard things.

But this is exactly what the life which is truly life does: it presses us into an existence which, at this moment, can feel quite uncomfortable. It's not what we're accustomed to. It's new.

The process of renovating a life is messy.

How you encountered "messiness" as you approach the desires of your heart? Is it difficult sometimes to know if what you long for is right and how to pursue it?