Merry Christmas Everyone

The Desire of All Nations Has Come

The “desire of all nations”.  Do you know what it means to desire some thing or someone with an intensity so fierce it unsettles you?  Can we desire the Lord that way and still be sober?  I mean sober in the sense of sober-minded.  Sometimes I do -  long for Him, I mean, with the same desire the heart of every desperate seeker longs with.  If we seek with with the same passion we seek our addictions with, perhaps we would be found by Him – seeking Him with everything we’ve got ‘till we can say with Eric Liddell, “I feel His pleasure.”  Oh God, we want to feel Your pleasure.  The desire of ages, the desire of all nations, Christ the Savior is born.   This is our true desire’s star – that “infinite, soul-staggering grandeur” that only He can fulfill.  Our souls were designed to be connected to something bigger, something higher – His “shocking, stunning, divine, absolute, staggering grandeur.”  The human heart was “made to be staggered by terrifyingly awesome, joyous dread and peace.” ^[1] The human heart was made to find its pleasure in God.

  “The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. . . . 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.” ^[2]

 

Resources

1. Piper, John, God’s Design for History, gods-design-for-history-the-glory-of-his-mercy
2. Lewis, C.S. The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, HarperSanFrancisco 2001