Thomas
Merton once wrote: "Life is shaped by the end you live
for. You are made in the image of what you
desire."
As
human beings, we differ substantially from the inanimate
objects of our everyday world. Unlike our cars,
furniture, and kitchen utensils,
our
lives are constantly morphing into new shapes. We are
forever
"becoming."
And
Merton is surely correct. We "become" what we
desire.
Our
desires tend to be extremely diverse, and
change with time. For a time we desire marriage and
children, then we long for financial success and
security, or we want to own a home, or we wish for
success as a leader. W
hatever desire
drives us most in a given season, determines the shape
of our lives at that time. We are the ultimate
chameleons.
Think
of the man consumed with sexual desires and how it
affects his lifestyle, his relationships, his
conversation ... him. Or the person whose burning desire
is a marriage partner, and how it affects their
judgement, their settledness ... them. Or the desire for
success and how it affects our decisions, our
time-management, our families ...
us.
As
each desire takes hold of us, we find ourselves
transformed. Our challenge is
to
distill those desires into a single one - the desire for
God.
God
created us with desires - especially the desire for
Him. We
may not have drilled down that deeply, but it's true.
All other dominating desires reflect distorted ways by
which we seek to complete what only He can
fulfill.
The
desire for intimacy with another person in marriage is a
reflection of our desire for intimacy with God. Our
desire for respect from others can only be satisfied by
the full acceptance we experience from the Father. The
desire for achievement is usually attached to
significance or security, both of which are found most
perfectly in
Christ.
Our pursuit
of seasonal desires distracts us from the pursuit
of
God.
Psalm
73 opens up the third book of the Psalms and Asaph
writes: "Apart from You, O Lord, I desire nothing on
earth" (v.25b). Surely this defines what he means
by "pure in heart" (v.1). Purity of heart is not
necessarily a moral issue, but one of singular and
pre-eminent desire for
God.
Similarly,
and much later, Jesus says "Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God" (Matt 5.8). Again, the
text probably revolves less around moral purity and more
around a single, unadulterated desire for
God.
This
focused desire is modeled by the Apostle Paul
when he gladly discards everything he has desired in the
past, so as to pursue wholeheartedly the one desire of
his present - "to know Christ Jesus" (Phil
3.8ff).
I
may not always get what I want, but I will always become
what I want. Merton was
right.
What
do you want most right
now?
"Lord,
purify my desire to want You above all
else."