“Sehnsucht”
C. S. Lewis, that inimitable Christian whose wit and prose still have the “aroma” of fresh-spun text, had enormous success in communicating truth in thin packages which people could easily unpack. I mean by this that his words were not bulky or difficult to understand. Lewis connected and connects with our in-most selves, our truest selves.
To Lewis, this longing was a “proof”, an “evidence’, of immortality. It was the real-life equivalent of the Preacher’s declaration that (Ecclesiastes 3:11) “[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
Lewis wrote:
”Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food . A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of a copy, or echo, or mirage. 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.” –Mere Christianity
How foolish it would be to attempt to satisfy thirst with dust or hunger with shadows! Yet we do often attempt what is more foolish still. . .to content our eternal souls with the toys of time.
What really will it matter if you achieve all that you now dream? Look again at your dreams. Will those achievements be worth anything one moment after you set foot in that country where God’s will is the sole concern? And how do those giants of temptation and ambition shrivel and shrink under the glare of this light! They falsely promise us that full degree of joy, peace, contentment, relationship, etc. available only in God’s presence.
Psalm 16:11 says of God: “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.”
Fullness of Joy? Eternal pleasures? Yes. Bye and bye. But only in God’s presence; only at His right hand.
The condition of all Creation is, at present, characterized by the longing for something better, something completely satisfying, something eternally wonderful. This is how the Scriptures express that longing:
Romans 8:23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
2 Corinthians 5:2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling,
2 Corinthians 5:4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
Lewis also described his first awareness of this “sehnsucht” –this deep longing– in his account of his conversion, ‘Surprised by Joy’:
“The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me: Milton’ s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course of desire; but desire for what? Not, certainly, for a biscuit tin filled with moss nor even for my own past, and before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred up by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison.”
Longing is part and parcel of living in a world where we are disconnected, at so many levels, from the God Who made us to fully interface with Himself. That vague dissatisfaction has a fulfillment through Christ and beyond the moment of our emancipation from the limitations of our sensory-crippled bodies.
If you’ve felt the tug of sehnsucht or have ever tumbled about in its wake, be hopeful! There is a land and there is a Lord in which all our longings will find restful satisfaction. Even now you may sample, in a relationship with Jesus Christ, what you may fully own in that future land.
Hands on Faith
