"... filled with a quiet longing..."

A week or so ago, MarcV, a Brutally Honest regular (thanks Marc) and a blogger himself, referred to this Christianity Today piece, something I find especially interesting if for different reasons:

Down through the years I have made a surprising discovery. Most of the Christians I know are disappointed with their churches, finding them either too traditional or too modern. Their sermons are too theological or not theological enough. The people are cliquish. In the end, the root problem is always the same. It's the people.

Yet Sunday after Sunday these believers return to their pews, expecting God to meet them there once again. Some might view such attendance as an act of futility or an exercise in wishful thinking. I believe it is a work of grace.

The author of The Message and veteran pastor Eugene Peterson has written that when we get serious about the Christian life, we usually find ourselves in a place and among people that we find incompatible. "That place and people," Peterson explains, "is often called a church. It's hard to get over the disappointment that God, having made an exception in my case, doesn't call nice people to repentance."

...

It has been nearly four decades since I first went looking for Christ on Church Street. The place where I worship today is neither mysterious nor drab. Its message, still rooted in the hope of the Cross, is consistently positive. Its décor is corporate, its music unrelentingly chipper. I like it.

There are times, though, when I am filled with a quiet longing for the shadow of mystery and the unsettling scent of holiness. In many ways, I am still waiting for the Spirit to fall and for God's people to "get the victory." Wednesday night's children have all grown and gone and the dodge balls have long since been put away. After all these years, there are still times when I feel like an unwelcome visitor. Nevertheless, I decided long ago to cast my lot with the church. It has probably failed me as many times as I have failed it, but I will not abandon it. I could not, without abandoning myself.

'Filled with a quiet longing for the shadow of mystery and the unsettling scent of holiness'.

That's good stuff, aptly describing my own heart and my place these days.  I'm filled less with faith, at least faith as I once defined it, and more with... well... that quiet longing. 

A couple of weeks ago, I rode the Harley to my favorite place after having a particularly tough day.  I sat on my favorite bench for a while, the one with the view of two lighted buoys in the distance, on a night made bright by the near full moon, on a night where that moon's light danced on the water's surface like something out of a painting, pondering my troubles, wondering, like most of us do I'd think, why.  Why this.  Why that. Just why.

I didn't get any answers, at least anything I'd find satisfying, but I do remember at one point wishing longing for God's presence to be made manifest, even bargaining with God that if an apparition of Christ would appear on the water amongst those dancing moon borne fireflies, I'd not tell a soul.  It'd just be something that I'd take to the grave, my own personal sign of the reality of God.

Well, I didn't get that sign.  And the why questions linger.  I, like the author of the CT piece, am waiting for the Spirit to fall, for the victory to come in the circumstances being faced.  Empty of the faith once held, full of that longing I now claim as faith.

The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love; but if the soul cannot yet feel this longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God.

— Meister Eckhart

Flame on Lord, flame on.

Comments

[stephanie]

I love this idea of holy longing. It is the undefinable space within the body mind and heart - the soul, that seems to hold the place of holy longing. Sometimes it is the place of simply just 'being' and the meoment where you find shalom and being known and accepted with nothing being asked of you. At least that is my experience of the moments where the Almighty comes to tangibly visit with me in the place of holy longing.

[matt]

My first interaction with "holy longing" was when I listend to Mark Buchanan (author of Your Good is Too Safe; Things Unseen) and the idea of "longing for the longing".

I am a parent, a spouse, a school teacher, a person who tries to be all things for all people...I need a motorcycle and a spot to drive to so that I may wrestle with this as I search for Shalom.

[Nicks]

Longing for God, and a dissatisfaction with your current spiritual place are part of the maturing process. It is part of what God uses to drive us deeper and deeper.

As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God? Psa. 42:1-2

Check this out:

How the habitual sense of God’s Presence was found. By BROTHER LAWRENCE

SINCE you desire so earnestly that I should communicate to you the method by which I arrived at that habitual sense of GOD’s Presence, which our LORD, of His mercy, has been pleased to vouchsafe to me; I must tell you, that it is with great difficulty that I am prevailed on by your importunities...

The account I can give you is:
Having found in many books different methods of going to GOD, and divers practices of the spiritual life, I thought this would serve rather to puzzle me, than facilitate what I sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly GOD’s.

This made me resolve to give the all for the All: so after having given myself wholly to GOD, to make all the satisfaction I could for my sins, I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He; and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world.

Read the rest:
PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD THE BEST RULE OF A HOLY LIFE

Flee to His word to see His face....
Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Isa. 55:6

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Rom. 12:1-2

For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. 1 Thess. 2:13

Nicks

[MarcV]

Been on holiday, or I would have commented sooner ...

Thanks for the plug, and I'm glad that you read that article. I'll throw a slight curve at you and refer to what the author was trying to get at: going back to the faith he had as a child and relating that to where he is at now.

Particularly if you were brought up in a Catholic or conservative mainline Protestant church, there are the rituals and prayers that seem mystical through "youngster" eyes. You don't know why they did all that "stuff", but it all seemed very solemn and powerful. It can also mess with a young mind in thinking that there are only certain prescribed ways to worship and communicate with God.

As our faith matures, we should get to the point of accepting some mysteries in our faith. Since nobody else brought this up - (Heb. 11:1) Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It's natural for us to want a special sign that God does hear us and responds to us directly, as well as being frustrated when all we get is silence.

Lord, help us with our unbelief.
Give us peace to accept the things we cannot see yet hope for,
Give us strength to help those we do see in need of You.
Bless those who have not seen yet still believe. Amen.

[Elizabeth D]

I hear you and feel for you... I used to have a literalist take on faith and I would make myself sick with the longing for physical signs, for intellectual ways of knowing. This kind of longing is "looking for God in all the wrong places"--it's fear of "the cloud of unkowing" and fear that God is absent. It's antithetical to faith. God is present to those who wait for him. He is intensely present in prayer, and I see his work all around me in love and reconciliation and peacemaking. I see what he is doing in the world and I fall down in awe. I don't want an apparition, I want the Kingdom, and I want to follow Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that belief was only possible with obedience, and obedience only possible with belief.