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January 2

The Longing Heart

While the God of the biblical story is the God who is there, God can be found when we come in humility and faith. Thus we are to be the seekers of God even when we have already been found.

The life of faith is characterized by a strange dialectic, where two seeming opposites are in creative tension. What this looks like is that we have been given grace, but need to ask for it; we have been forgiven in Christ, but need to seek forgiveness; we have been found by the seeking God, but need to find the God who has already embraced us.

St. Anselm understands this. He prays this prayer to Christ: “My Lord and my Creator, you bear with me and nourish me—be my helper. I thirst for you, I hunger for you, I desire you, I sigh for you, I covet you.”2 This prayer expresses the further longing of someone who has already come home to the heart of God. Homecoming is only a beginning. Growth in relationship and intimacy is the great desire, for enough is never enough in the intimacy of love.

The life of faith, therefore, is a life of response and longing. We

respond in love, worship, and service to the God who has first reached out to us. And we long to know more fully the God who already knows us and has called us into the wide spaces of his presence. In the art of longing we lean into what may yet be and what we may yet become.

Thought

The longing heart is the heart already gently touched by the Great Lover.