Longings of the heart. Do you have one? A yearning that won't go away? A craving that won't be fulfilled? A desire for something you cannot quite put your finger on? Most of us do.
This time of year has all the festivities spreading out like wild fire! The seeming happiness all around us seems to glow!!! Yet, is our heart longing for something? Yearning? Thirsting? Aching for something more?
Joni Eareckson Tada wrote a beautiful book years ago called: "A Christmas Longing." Joni is a quadriplegic who writes with a pen in her mouth. I hope you will look up her book and read it. Absorb it's wisdom. Cherish the thoughts that she shares.
She touches on what our hearts are missing....longing for...a plan behind the pain that is in our lives. A way to fill that hole right smack dab in the middle of our hearts. In the middle of the holidays. In the middle of the festivities.
Yesterday, we celebrated Thanksgiving with our families and friends. I hope you felt gratitude swell up from deep within for all the blessings we have!!! It is such a wonderful, heart-warming tradition here in the USA and I hope that each of you had someone to celebrate and give thanks with and for in our life. Could you relate like the Pilgrims in 1620 who stood on the shore and celebrated the bounty they had? Again, I hope so!!!
Yet, with all that wonderful - did you have a longing that couldn't be quenched? Is there something deeper that you are longing for to fulfill? What pilgrimage are you on right now? Are you missing someone who is gone from this earth? Are you wishing you had a someone special in your life? Are you struggling with a job or a boss that you cannot stand? Are you running from something you don't want to face??? Are you concerned about our country and the world so much that your heart hurts? Is fear fueling your thoughts? Does despair have a hold on you?
If so, there is a well that is SO deep that it never runs dry. Never. Would you like to know where
you can find that living water? John 4:14 says: "Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks from this well will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." Think about that!!! Never thirsty again....that's the kind of well I want to drink out of!!!
Would you like to know where your soul can yearn and pine, your heart and flesh can cry out and be fulfilled? Read Psalm 84. It flows with the river of life! "How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord, Almighty! M soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out to the Living God! Even the sparrow has found a home and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young...." Wow - how beautiful!!!
Take a long, slow walk through the woods this weekend and be consumed with nature. Creation. Beauty all around. There are no words needed because the God of the Universe is the ONE who created all that beauty. He created that hole in each of our hearts! The shape and depth is exactly the size of God's incredible love!!! He longs to have you turn to Him. Trust Him. Rely on Him. Depend on Him.
That longing in your heart is God calling your name. Isaiah 40:26 says: "Lift your eyes and look to the heavens; Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name." I have a note in my Bible next to this verse for my dad. He was so very lonely after my parents divorced in 1973. I watched him pine away. He longed for relationships with all four of us kids, yet never quite could bridge that gap once the divorce happened. He had a God-shaped hole in his heart and did not even realize it! He longed for that hole to be filled every day. Reflecting back on his life, I don't know if he ever asked God into his heart. He was raised Catholic, so I know he knew who God was, but asking God into your heart and relying on Him is completely different than knowing there is a God. I pray each of you reading this will ask God into your heart and don't allow that longing to linger....
God knows your name. Believe it. Relish in the fact that the God of the Universe loves YOU!
Yes, even you. With all your scars, flaws, hopelessness, despair and discomfort, He loves you. Reveres you. Cherishes you. And longs to be a part of your life! To fill that hole in your heart...
I am convinced that the longing in our hearts is the hole in so many people's hearts and lives today.
They do not realize how much they are loved. I believe it because I have seen it in so many people around me and even the people I love in my family who are floundering....they long to be loved, to be understood, to matter to others. My dad was like that - he was a wonderful man who had so much love in his heart and yet he did not feel loved after my parents divorced. How about you? Do you feel loved?
Fill that longing in your heart with God. Fill it with love. Ask for His love to swell in your heart so deeply that you cannot contain it!!! Allow yourself to be loved in the fullest way possible!!! God's love is real. It is incredible. It is overwhelming. And, it is yours for the asking!!!
