The other day a website sent me a one-question survey. It is a secular website, but a thoughtful one. It deals with issues and articles that are deeper than the daily news cycle. The question went something like: “If you could live forever, trouble free, would you? Yes or no.”
The premise of the question was kind of ridiculous. How could we ever live in this world ‘trouble free’? Still, I went along with it. I answered “No.” A space was provided to explain my answer. I put down a few sentences about how God made us for heaven and to be reconciled to Himself. Why should we just keep prolonging our stay in this world if we have heaven in our future and a full encounter with our Creator and Savior?
Every Christian has that longing for God and heaven. But in that longing there is a meantime, where we feel the world’s sin and disappointments. We live in the gap between what should happen and what does happen. Longing implies that you want something but don’t have it yet. It means living with loose ends and unfulfilled expectations.
We try to find as many fulfillments and satisfactions as we can in our present lives. Sometimes it’s in small things like travelling. Some trips hit all the high notes that we hoped for. I know I had high hopes for my first overseas trip, which was to Israel and Jordan. That trip checked every box of what I hoped it would be.
But some trips disappoint. For example, I used to be a bit enamored with Oxford, England with all its colleges and architecture and famous people that attended there. But when I visited, I didn’t like it as well as I thought I would.
Sometimes we seek fulfillment by doing things. Growing up, I lived about 100 yards away from the edge of a golf course. I’d walked, jogged, rode my bike, and later drove by that course a thousand times, but never played it. Finally, I was determined to do it. So, with a friend, I went there but couldn’t play because we hadn’t signed up for a tee time in advance. I let the issue go the back burner; I left home and moved on, but never quite forgot about that unfulfilled goal. About three years ago, during a visit to my hometown, I was determined to finally play that course. I arranged ahead for a tee time. The place was crowded and the pace of play was slow. The grass was soggy from rain. I played pretty badly. It wasn’t much fun. I ended up quitting after nine holes partly because the whole thing took longer than I thought (and I had something else to do), but also partly out of frustration. The long-delayed goal didn’t turn out like I hoped.
But there are other goals I haven’t fulfilled yet, and someday I’d like to try. I’d like to visit all six inhabited continents (I’ve been to four). Another is to see the northern lights one day. Maybe I’ll get to do these things; maybe not.
But some hopes are important: things like good health, having mobility in old age, having sufficient finances and being on good terms with family. We hope we get these things but might not. There might be a gap between desire and reality.
In the biggest area, the spiritual area, there’s that gap too. Our knowledge of God is limited; we know some things but not everything. And sometimes we’d like to hear some specific guidance from God, like a voice from heaven, but don’t. And prayers, some of them get answered the way we want but some don’t, even if they are for good, solid things, and we see nothing wrong with them. God leaves a gap, frustrating and uncomfortable as it might be, and in this gap there is room for faith.
God has “set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end,” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We have eternity in our hearts; but it is too big for us to understand with our finite bodies and brains.
The good news is that our longing will not last forever. The gap between what is and what should be is not a permanent condition.
There will come a day when the waiting will be over: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known,” (1 Corinthian 13:12). The King James Bible has it, “For now we see through a glass darkly…” We have to walk by faith, not knowing everything, not experiencing everything. We must live with what we have.
When Christ comes back, “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is,” (1 John 3:2). Until then we feel like strangers in the world, because we are.
C.S. Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity, said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” He added later: “I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”
Since we were made for another world, it’s okay to be disappointed in this one. We will not meet all our goals in life. It’s even okay not be as happy as you want. Sometimes we put ourselves under so much pressure. We think we have to be fulfilled and happy because the books and magazines say we should be! But fulfillment and happiness and making our goals might come or they might not. Disappointments shouldn’t dismay us because we were made for another world and this present world is a mixed bag at best. To put ourselves under pressure to be successful or happy is just to add an unnecessary layer of trouble to a world that already has enough trouble.
Our desires are presently greater than our realities. God had set it that way so we will long for Him and long for heaven. While we wait with our partial sight and partial knowledge we should not concentrate on attaining personal fulfilment or happiness but should serve God and others the best we can, have faith, and endure.