when nothing satisfies
What is satisfaction? What does desire-fulfilled look like? What happens when expectations are not only met but exceeded? To be satisfied, fulfilled, content...Is it even possible? More than that, is it sustainable?I've sought satisfaction in all number of things, people, places, activities...many things have given me great joy and pleasure, and yet I cannot remain satisfied. I always need more or something else (Solomon talks about this in Ecclesiastes 2). And I have placed expectations on things, people, places, activities, and been sorely disappointed many times, because they don't satisfy as I had desired them to.
In angst, I frantically search for something to fulfill some unseen desire for satisfaction. It's a sly desire that I often don't realize how it dictates so much of life and choices and motivations.
A musician friend of mine once wrote a song and I got to be one of the first few to read/evaluate it. That was at least 6 years ago, and yet it left an impression. It was called Necessary Evil and talked of how we always crave more, need something else, and that unsettledness, that discontent, that necessary evil, is really what leads us to find our ultimate satisfaction in the only One who can give it, our Lord Christ.
CS Lewis states it well: Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. ~ CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory
And so, I'm rejecting, turning aside from, making a conscious effort to not be satisfied by anything else. Instead I'm running hard toward Jesus, calling on Him to prove His promises to satisfy me.
And what I'm finding is that by looking toward Christ alone for satisfaction, placing my hopes and dreams and desires and expectations on Him, He meets me, and then He also blesses me with other things that overflow my satisfaction. And those things are so much better because they're extra, because I recognize I don't need them but I do get to enjoy them because God Himself has filled me and fitted me to enjoy Him first and most of all and His gifts secondarily.
Oh to not be pleased or satisfied with lesser things, to not be content with little things when my Lord offers so much more! Oh to find all I need and desire in Christ alone! Oh to truly believe that all this is true, and live like it!
I said to the LORD, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."...LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance...I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken...You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. ~ from Psalm 16
posted by FaithChristine @ 12:59
2 Comments:
I love that CS Lewis quote (my fave).
May you (we) find satisfaction in Him.
Hannah asked me: "so how is Jesus meeting and filling those places?"
My answer: "Sometimes I've been finding that merely in the asking and opening of space for him, that I learn how much I fill God's spot with other things...so I often have to wait, feeling empty, but opening that space to Him Who it belongs to in the first place. Yesterday, I went for a run, listening to music...right at the end of the run, Josh Groban's "Remember when it Rained" song came on, and it started raining at the same time...so cool...and the lyrics really can be turned toward Christ, which is how I thought of them at the time, and I turned my face to the sky, with the rain pattering down on me, laid down in the grass and just felt full...satisfied, joyful...like God was meeting me... I had left work feeling empty, saying 'okay God, where are you? satisfy me!' and just did what I knew was good for me (running), and in it, God met me and my perspective changed."
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