A Longing to be Filled

07.28.12

Isaiah 55.1 1“Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

What would it be like to go shopping today and spend no money but get whatever you wanted? At first, it seems like I would fill shopping carts with all kinds of stuff, but at the end of the free spree what would I have gained? Carts full of stuff. And?

This verse spoke to me today of wanting something so desperately but having no means with which to obtain it. This verse speaks to me of needing something so badly but having no way in the world of getting it. I think of people starving for food who will do whatever they can to get as much as they can when food is set before them – their animal instincts take over and they cannot get enough. They’ve been without for so long that they can’t seem to make their minds accept that the abundance before them will last. And on earth, nothing lasts that long.

I believe every person on this earth is born with a longing to be filled – not so much just with food, although that is probably one of the first and strongest longings. But a baby also longs for mommy and for her touch. He longs to hear her voice and feel her warmth and presence. I believe, the soul of every person has those kinds of longings for the divine – an itch that cannot be scratched, a thirst that cannot be quenched, a pang that just will not go away no matter how much food is consumed.

However long inside a person these longings last, they are eventually covered up with the non-nutritive demands of vice, selfishness, greed, and the basest of desires known to man in order to satisfy, at any cost, the longings, which have now become naggings, within them. Like giving sugar to the starving it satisfies momentarily but soon gives way to a more fierce hunger.

God knows the depth of our longings – He put them there. He put within us a desire to be better (knowing that our desires, in this life, are only shadowy representations of the real thing: the longing for Him.) The natural man has no way, in himself, to fulfill his longings for the divine – he only knows there is a hole within himself that he cannot fill no matter how much he pours into it. It is to these that God offers: “Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” His response to me and you and everyone else is: Come to Me and I will abundantly and everlastingly satisfy whatever it is that you think you need.

The longings within us are reminders of the presence of God around us – to some the longings have become a god and so to that god they bow. To others, the ears of their hearts catch a sound unlike any sound of earth: the sound of salvation, the sound of redemption, the sound of satisfaction. It is the sound of, Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. To the hungry, the thirsty, the anguished, the anxious, the fretful, the worried, the sad, the sick, the poor, the destitute, the forgotten, the lonely, the sad, the lost, the perishing… there is no sweeter sound than the invitation to have one’s longings met – at last! That is God’s Gift to us in Christ.