Holy Discontentment

“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”—Psalm 42:1-2

There is a holy longing placed within every person on this earth. People try to fill this longing with all kinds of pleasures, passions, and pursuits, but none will fill except Christ and Him alone. And for the believer who has Christ, there is still a longing that only He can fill. As the deer pants for water, so we pant and long for God. We have a soul thirst that only He can quench, but the totality of that longing will remain unfulfilled until we can appear before God. As our passage for today shows—we will have a holy discontentment until that day when we will see Him face to face. This holy discontentment that we have in this world demonstrates that we were made for something more. As C.S. Lewis described it,

"The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.' A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. 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 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 the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, 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 the other country and to help others do the same."

Lewis was expressing the idea that all of the pleasures that we experience on earth are only a shadow, an echo, or mirage of what is to come. The earthly pleasures that we experience are only meant to point us to the greatest pleasure of knowing and enjoying Christ in eternity. We were made for a relationship with Him and we groan until the day when we shall “see Him face to face.” As Paul wrote,  

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known”—1 Corinthians 13:12. 

We long for that day; we will experience a holy discontentment until it happens, or as it says in Romans,

“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies”—Romans 8:22-23.

We long for that day. We don’t know what it will be like—the day He comes again or when we die to go and be with Him. But we do know that we will see Him who is our greatest joy and treasure—our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. John wrote about the mystery surrounding that day:

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is”—1 John 3:2.

We shall see Him and we shall be like Him! What a day of rejoicing that will be! What a hope we have to get through today! And what joy we have for tomorrow! May we continually have a holy discontentment until that glorious day when we see Him face to face and our souls will experience a satisfaction and joy to which the pleasures of this world cannot compare! Amen.