Epipetheo, a personal meditation on longing

I have talked to many people as of late that this idea of longing has come to my mind time and time again. As I listen and watch others live their lives, I have been given the opportunity to peek into their hearts. Some willingly give up this information and others it is purely through the eyes of God's Holy Spirit. However it is, I never take it lightly. One dear friend has shared her struggles with where her path has gone, doing what is the farthest from her desire, crying at times from the sheer frustration of it. Another dear one I know, I have watched seek earthly thing after earthly thing, some fun thing to fill the need for fulfillment. These things are not bad but after a while, the pattern shows and I see there beneath is a desire to be filled, a desire to be complete, a space needing to be filled with in. I have watched some seek the quenching of their longing threw knowledge, threw relationships, threw hobbies, through work, threw acceptance from the world, threw money, threw even trying to accept themselves. I have talked to many a people that in their own unique way experience a longing. These longings are legitimate. Satan makes some feel guilty for even having a longing while others make a grand home out of them. Still some just add it to the proverbial cart they lug with them everyday.

I have learned, and not easily or in a short amount of time, that longing has a purpose a bitter yet sweet purpose. Like the fiery furnace in Daniel in the OT, we are either delivered into the furnace, through the furnace or from the furnace. In other words, we either go through the trial, don't go through the trial or never make it out on this side of Heaven through the trial. I think the three children in my last post, at this point in time, are examples of this truth. Stellan has been saved from the trial. Where once he was thought not to make it, to not be a little boy, he was born with a beautiful healthy heart, not the one the doctors predicted. Audrey was delivered into the trial. Her precious life was short and now she glories in the presence of Jesus in Heaven. Abby is in the trial, she is walking in that fiery furnace, praying and hoping the chemotherapy will be enough. What purpose could all of this possibly serve? I have been witness to see lives changed as people tune in to each of these children's parents blogs. I have read comments of lives changed, of hearts filled with a peace that surpasses undrestanding. I have seen strangers ban together. I have watched as these wee ones and their families walk their course longing themselves, their walk has opened the eyes of many to their own longing.

I trully believe all longing serves one ultimate purpose because true pure longing was instilled in use as a seed from the beginning. A longing to be filled with the love of God. At our creation, that very heart beat started with the knowledge that it is wholly and completely loved. We spend our lives seeking to fill the very space made for it. I accutely remember my own journey trying to fill that need for fulfillment, for satisfaction, for love, for completeness. I'm ashamed to say I hurt many people along the way. I selfishly sought it from people, from things, from activities. I didn't find it that way but I did find bitterness and frustration, resentment and envy. I cannot say it was of my own will or of my own finding, but God did make Himself known. He asked to have a try at filling that void. I gave Him the chance and He delivered and still is delivering. I still tried to fill it with other things, pushing Him aside, still do actually, but time and time again, it is God the Father who can fill that space who satisfies the longing.

I say satisfies but does not take away. Now I live with a new longing that gives me purpose, strength, determination, peace and joy, no more emptiness, dead ends, or loneliness. I throw this energy not in getting rid of the longing but in seeking to be open and vulnerable to others that they may too find what I have found. I long for Jesus, for time with my Heavenly Father. I seek my God and He delivers. I have heard it called a God shaped hole. He fits it perfectly while nothing else did. I share this because what I have that brings me joy, I want others to have also. I am not a lamp under a blanket but rather want to be a lit up city on a hill.