I THIRST - THE DEEPEST LONGING OF MY RESTLESS HEART
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.””
NOTE: Please feel free to substitute the word ‘God’ in this reflection with whatever best expresses the Eternal Source of Life and Love for you.
“God, you are my God, I am seeking you,
my soul is longing for you,
my flesh is longing for you,
a land parched,
weary and waterless”
Let these words soak into your heart, as you sit, silently relaxed, in God’s presence. Imagine yourself as a sponge, soaking up God’s love for you. Feel God filling your heart. Feel the living water trickling through the highways and by ways of your life – through your experience of living today.
Try drawing a life tree, like this. The tree shows how our desires, like our moods, have deep hidden roots, and if we follow these roots to their first origins (given that our directness is towards God) will we not discover that all our deeply-felt desires, at their true source, will be connected with our desire for God and our desire to become the person God is dreaming into being in our Who-centre?
Take a moment to reflect on any desires that you can identify like these, perhaps from childhood or in careers or relationships.
Remember, if you can, one or two things in your life that you have really longed for.
Name those feelings and longings in yourself that you would see as root desires and branch desires.
Can you identify now what deeper needs and longings lay beneath these desires?
What secret dreams or ambitions do you cherish? What is it that prevents you from seeking to fulfil them?
What is it that we are really longing for, and never quite find? And do we, perhaps, begin to find it in those moments when we experience the deep peace and solidity of consolation? Perhaps we begin to find it when we begin to notice God gradually unfurling his reality in our own Who-centre.
Bring your feelings and your fears into prayer….
From “Landmarks, an Ignation Journey” by Margaret Silf