Human hearts are full of longing. Each of us, in different ways, holds some vision of what would make life complete. For some, it is achieving a career so high and distinguished that the world remembers their name. For others, it is cultivating brilliance like Socrates, becoming the wisest of their age. For still others, it is gaining riches beyond imagination, or experiencing a love so deep and enduring that it feels like paradise itself.
These desires are not trivial. They are woven into the fabric of human existence. To long for greatness, wisdom, wealth, or love is part of what it means to be alive. And yet, there is a longing higher still, a longing that dwarfs even the sum of all these other aspirations.
That longing is for God.
When the soul comes to recognize the reality of a living, personal, infinite God, a strange reversal begins. What once seemed supreme begins to pale. The very things that once filled the horizon of our imagination, success, brilliance, wealth, romance, shrink into the background when compared to the radiant joy of knowing the Creator Himself.
The difference is not a small one. It is not that God is slightly better, or one rung higher, than our other desires. The difference is vast, immeasurable. Even if you were to take all human ambitions and roll them into one, the greatest career, the highest intelligence, the richest fortune, the most enduring love, they would together still be a distant second. The gap between the whole collection of worldly treasures and the singular reality of God in the heart is as wide as eternity.
This does not mean that careers, wisdom, wealth, or love have no place. They can be good and beautiful gifts. But when they sit in the throne of the heart, they burden us with a weight they cannot bear. When God takes that throne, everything else finds its rightful place, no longer idols, but blessings.
To grow spiritually is to undergo this reordering of desire. It is to reach a place where, whatever else we may seek, our deepest and most abiding hunger is for God Himself. In that hunger is freedom. In that hunger is life.
For when God is our first love, we find that even if all else is taken away, we still hold everything. And if He chooses to give us the other things, career, wisdom, wealth, love, they come as grace, not as gods.
The prayer, then, is simple: may we grow spiritually, until every desire, no matter how grand, bows before the surpassing worth of knowing God.
The Unity of Desire: Finding All in Jesus.
