“Every human being with normal mental and emotional faculties longs for more …If only this, that, or some other thing were different, we say to ourselves, then we’d feel complete and happy. …Acquiring the better job, the bigger house, the new spouse, or world fame we longed for may provide a temporary sense of happiness and completeness, but it never lasts. Sooner or later, the hunger returns. [We have] …a vague and bittersweet nostalgia and/or longing for a distant country, but one that cannot be found on earth. …a quasi-mystical sense that we (and our present world) are incomplete, combined with an unattainable yearning for whatever it is that would complete it. …this longing is not puzzling from a biblical perspective, for Scripture teaches us that humans and the entire creation are fallen and estranged from God. Lewis saw [this] as reflective of our ‘pilgrim status.’ It indicates that we are not where we were meant to be, where we are destined to be; we are not home.

Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off is . . . the truest index of our real situation. C. S. Lewis

“With Lewis, Christians have always identified this [uneasiness or longing] that resides in the human heart as a yearning for God. …as a sort of homing device placed in us by our Creator to lead us into a passionate relationship with him. …It’s my conviction that we are made to perpetually share in a life in which we are perfectly and unconditionally loved, in which we experientially know we could not mater more to God than we already do, and in which we feel absolutely secure in his love and worth, for we know that nothing – including the loss of our biological life – could cause us to lose this life.” Gregory Boyd  [my emphasis]

“I came that they may have life … abundantly.”
John 10:10

 Moving From Head to Heart

• Do you feel like a “pilgrim” on this earth? Is there a sense of unfulfilled longing deep within you?
• Can you live with that, waiting upon God, or do you insist on attempting to fill it with things-other-than-God?
• Reread the last (italicized) sentence. This is what God wants for you. Have you begun to enter into it?

Abba, I will hope in you.

For More: Benefit of the Doubt by Gregory Boyd