I like to imagine when I pass a chimney with smoke bellowing out that there’s a family inside…
Maybe a group of friends enjoying sugar cookies, or a mother with her child watching a classic family film. I have this thing inside me that wants life to appear picture perfect. Maybe it is too many Hallmark movies, but maybe its something more deeply rooted inside my soul.
The image of a perfect Christmas cookies or the flawless dinner around the table with friends and family sometimes leaves me yearning for something more.
Have you felt it?
The longing for perfect? For beauty?
C.S. Lewis wrote, “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.”
St. Augustine wrote, “O God, you made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”
These classic followers of Jesus knew something in their own souls like I’ve felt in mine. They understood that their longings were not going to be fulfilled on this earth. They also understood that those deep desires for perfection, were what makes us search for God, to DWELL with God.
This longing in our hearts for perfection is seen when we want life to be JUST, or FAIR, or RIGHT… we tend to scream in frustration. That desire for our world to be one of beauty comes from God giving us the longing for an unblemished world.
Psalm 84:1-2 says, “How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! My soul longed and even yearned for the court of the Lord; My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
The desire in our hearts for beauty was the same of that of the Psalmist.
But here in lies the difference… We tend to continue:
- longing for perfection in others and we will be disappointed.
- desiring for perfection in our circumstances and we will feel defeated.
- longing for that fairy tale world that oh so often leaves us depressed.
I believe if we can begin to DWELL with the Lord then everything else falls short. All the expectations, the striving for perfection, the hustle… it all pales in comparison to when we can DWELL with the creator of beauty itself.