Heart's Desire

King Arthur was once asked, 'What do women desire the most?'

At that time, the correct answer was said to be 'sovereignty'. From my experience, I don't think things have changed much over the centuries. Indeed, I would say that if you apply this broadly it is true for any created being. But autonomy and omnipotence in humans are more than impossible; any attempt towards them would be in opposition to God's authority.

What then is the greatest desire one can have without sin? What is the highest and purest longing of every human heart? What really makes us tick? I think what we want and need is to be known without explanation, and loved without justification—to be fully known, and yet fully loved. Not that I came up with this myself. I think I heard it first from Scott Mitchell, but poets have been saying it for ages as well:

     "Blessed are you," say I, who know all now,
     "you who have had some beautiful soul that lived life strongly,
     and knew you all through, and loved you ever."
     —Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, Le Roy Goldman.

The pressing question is then: 'Can this be fulfilled by another person? Will it ever be?' I am not going to answer this for you. Scientifically, the absence of proof is not proof of absence. But it is evidence. Instead, I want to answer a different question: 'Can this be fulfilled by God? Has it been already?'

This question was asked (and answered) by King David in Psalm 139, and I turn there first to find the solution. David begins with the intimate and disconcerting fact that an omniscient God can and does know us fully. No matter where we are or what we do, we cannot escape from God's knowledge, which resolves the first half of the question.

     ¹ O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
     You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
     ² You understand my thought from afar.

But this is not all. David continues in the second half of the psalm to praise God for his grace. God has done things for us which make David believe that He still loves him. His very knowledge suggests a concern for us, and all his works towards us are marvelous.

     ¹⁷ How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
     How vast is the sum of them
     ¹⁸ If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.

But still it is not enough. At the end of the psalm, close though David has come to God, he still senses distance, uncertainty, separation. He is not yet fully loved as he is fully known. There is something missing, and he cries:

     ²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart;
     Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
     ²⁴ And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
     And lead me in the everlasting way.

The world had to wait another two thousand years before that missing piece was revealed in Jesus. In Him is all the love of the Father expressed and manifested.Through Him we can approach God's holiness and be united with Him, receiving upon ourselves all the love which He has for His Son. Only one example will be necessary. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman by a well, he already knew everything she had ever done (John 4:29). And it wasn't pretty. But he still loved her enough to give her the water of life, and his offer stands for all of us as well:

     ¹⁴ Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst, but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.

     They say there's a teacher from Galilee
     Who says "If you're thirsty, come, come to me."
     And if you believe you will receive
     A fountain that flows from your heart.
     Drink from the river, the river of life
     Come and drink from the river that never runs dry.
     —Marty Goetz