July 20, 2007

• sehnsucht

  Have any of you read or listened to "The Pineapple Story" by Otto Koning?  It's a powerful listen... highly recommended... how a missionary and his wife gradually learned one simple lesson over and over in many different ways during their lives (and now try to help others learn it less painfully).

  The lesson: Instead of trying to hold on to anything good in life, 'give it back to God' in the sense of telling God, "God, you can take this away if You choose- I will keep loving You anyway and seeking my happiness in You alone." *

  I am learning this again myself these days in a particular situation.

   

  * Notice the superficial similarity but deeper diametric opposition to Buddhism...  Buddha taught that one should renounce all desire - i.e. one should give up longing for anything/everything, because everything in life is transient and will be taken away.   But the Bible teaches that God Himself is the One Person whom it's good to long for... to deeply desire... to 'worship' in the most proper sense of the word.  C.S.Lewis writes about "sehnsucht"-longing in his oft-quoted words: "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."   Rather than renouncing all desire, we Christians are to give up lesser desires so that we "may take hold of that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of" us -- i.e., knowing God Himself.

   Here are some more passages to think about along these lines:

   

  For My people have committed two evils:
  They have forsaken Me,
  The fountain of living waters,
  To hew for themselves cisterns,
  Broken cisterns
  That can hold no water.
  Jeremiah 2:13

  Now on the day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them, and the Sabeans attacked and took them. They also slew the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you."

  While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you."

  While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "The Chaldeans formed three bands and made a raid on the camels and took them and slew the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you."

  While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, and behold, a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they died, and I alone have escaped to tell you."

  Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped.
  He said,
  "Naked I came from my mother's womb,
  And naked I shall return there
  The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away.
  Blessed be the name of the LORD."
  Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God.
  Job 1:13-22 

   

   

  But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry.
  He prayed to the LORD and said, "Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life."

  The LORD said, "Do you have good reason to be angry?"

  Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. So the LORD God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant.

  But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, "Death is better to me than life."

  Then God said to Jonah, "Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?" And he said, "I have good reason to be angry, even to death."

  Then the LORD said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"
  Jonah 4

   

   

  "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
  Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he?
  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!"
  Matthew 7:7-11

   

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