Longing for God

Tuesday 12/11/2012 5:19 AM

As I opened my journal to write this morning I realized that it has been a week since I last wrote in it.  This time of year I am often busy with correcting the final midterm tests of the semester and getting ready for final exams so my schoolwork demands more of my time.  This year I am also in the middle of leading Children and Worship at our church for five weeks so I spend time reviewing my story, taking away from my regular devotional time.

Psalm 65 is my assigned psalm for the week and it describes a life of abundant blessing and joy.  Here are a few examples, “Blessed are those you choose and bring near to live in your courts!  We are filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple. … The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, and evening fades, you call forth songs of joy. … You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly. … You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.”  As I read the psalm I found that I longed for that kind of abundance in my life, not in the material blessings of overflowing carts and bounty but in the good things of the house of God, the joy that comes from intimacy with God.  It seems that I have been missing that intimacy over the course of the past year as my devotional time has dwindled from a daily routine to an intermittent, hit or miss proposition.  I long to regain what I have lost but it seems that any commitment I make to renew my routine is met with abject failure.

An excerpt from The Coming of God, by Maria Boulding, gave me some hope today.  She writes, “If you want God, and long for union with him, yet sometimes wonder what that means or whether it can mean anything at all, you are already walking with the God who comes.  If you are at times so weary and involved with the struggle of living that you have no strength even to want [God], yet are still dissatisfied that you don’t, you are already keeping Advent in your life.”  From her perspective I am walking with God in spite of how I feel about it.  Her perspective may well be true but I still long for the joy I have experienced in the past from shared intimacy with God.  That is something I miss.