Longing for the land

Recently, I started going to the gym again after a few years off. Becoming a parent can disrupt the best of intentions. While I felt a bit intimidated getting back into it, I’ve really enjoyed adding it back into my rhythm. My body feels stiffer and sorer than it used to, but at the same time, I’m feeling the continual progress and loving the challenge. One side effect I had forgotten about when adding a large amount of exercise into my routine is how hungry it can make me. I like to eat a lot normally and have to use great self-control to eat a reasonable amount of food, but exercising a lot just seems to make me ravenous. I feel as though I could just endlessly eat and not bat an eye—though anyone watching me no doubt would. The science behind it seems simple to me. Your body burns more energy exercising in addition to the energy needed to fuel your regular daily habits, so it fuels the desire to acquire more energy through food (kilojoules) to be able to prepare to continue doing this. More energy out, so the body needs more energy in. For most people, if you spend more energy than you store, you will probably lose weight as your body burns off your reserves (body fat) rather than food to fuel its functions. If you input more energy than you output, your body will stockpile energy to increase said reserves. 

The problem is that in modern culture, many of us find it easier to take more in than we put out, ending up with a stockpile of reserves we don’t really need. This doesn’t just go for food, though. Humanity seems to have an in-built disposition towards hoarding more and more—more than we really need. Just look at how many houses have double car garages yet both cars get parked in front because the whole garage is full of stuff! Greed and fear often drive people to continue to amass more and more because they feel they never have enough—and if they don’t get it, someone else will. 

Even when asking someone about money, the answer to the question “how much is enough?” is something along the lines of “just a bit more”. It doesn’t seem to matter if someone is struggling to live pay cheque-to-pay cheque or if they’ve got Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth. Everyone seems to have their eyes locked on clawing for just a bit more. 

I really like what pastor and author John Mark Comer says about this: “Desire is infinite. Meaning it has no limit. There’s no point at which desire is ever satisfied. And because we are finite (we inhabit time and space, I’m in one body, one gender, one marriage, one city, one job, one family, one life, one story), the end result is restlessness. We live with a chronic state of unsatisfied desire. Like an itch that just no matter how often you scratch it, it just does not go away.”

It’s true. We see humanity has an insatiable appetite for . . . well, almost everything. Sometimes this gets horribly out of control and can cause major harm—not just for individuals, but for whole communities. Think about how corporate greed has led to huge amounts of worker mistreatment and environmental destruction. 

Thankfully though, sometimes hunger manifests in positive ways, too. I love stories of someone catching a vision for a better tomorrow and becoming so hungry for it that they chase it with everything they’ve got. I think of figures like Martin Luther King Jr who caught a dream of a world where places that are “sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice” and where people “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”. He chased after this so passionately right up until his death. Likewise, his desire fuelled a hunger in so many others to run after this beautiful vision even today. 

Desire is a great motivator. It gets us out of bed in the morning, inspires us to work out, build a business— you name it! Unfortunately, when it spirals out of control, we get in trouble. So, the big question is, what can be done about this? Does God have a plan here or is He just sitting back to watch? I think CS Lewis in his beautiful book Mere Christianity hits the nail on the head by saying, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” Within us is a desire that cannot be fully satisfied by anything here on earth. 

Well, at least not as it is now. The Bible talks about a time when God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). 

All our desires will be completely satisfied—not just for a moment—but forever. We will live in the endless satisfaction of life how it was originally intended. I hope you now have a little more hope that the best is on its way—but what if you are struggling with desire right now? Here’s some practices that have helped me.

gratitude

I try to take time every day to write down or think about things I am grateful for. Whether it be great things that happened in my day; camels, strawberries, a TV show, a Bible verse that stands out etc. I just note a few things as often as I can, and it has made me so much more satisfied with the life I have. 

Sabbath

This is a time when I do my best to stop consuming and stockpiling and just rest; 24 hours where I don’t shop and try not to dwell on all the things I wish I had but just spend time with God and the people I love and serving others. It regularly gives me a small glimpse into what the New Earth will look like as I practice that life weekly. 

generosity

While it can feel good to receive something, it feels great to give. It also makes me less attached to all my stuff and more attached to what matters: people. 

I struggle to even wrap my head around what a world without pain or suffering would look like because it is just so foreign to my world. There is so much that could be unpacked about this, but right now I just want to focus on desire. The promise here is not that God will take us away forever but that one day there will be a whole new earth. A restored earth. An earth that is not corrupted by fear, greed or evil as we know it now, but where there is no pain and no tears. A world that fully realises the good ways that God intended for His creation. A world where we all have all we need because we dwell with God, the Giver of all life. A world where we each live a life of perfect love for one another like Jesus showed us in His life here on earth.