...for unless we long unweariedly with heavenly desires, we needs must be entangled in earthly ones.

  - Columbanus, Sermon VIII (Irish, 7th century)

How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.

  - Psalm 84.1, 2

I wonder what place this notion of longing unweariedly with heavenly desires occupies in our souls?

What are heavenly desires, anyway? Certainly to know the Lord, to meet Him in His glory and to experience the fullness of joy and pleasure He promises there - that would be a heavenly desire.

To live above temptation and without sin, that too, I would think. Do we long for this unweariedly?

To make the Good News of the Kingdom known as far and wide as we can also fits the category of heavenly desires, for this, we know, is what the Lord desires of us His people.

To love truth, pursue justice, bring holiness to completion in the fear of God, love our neighbors as ourselves, love God supremely, seek first His Kingdom - these are all heavenly desires. How large a place do they occupy in our daily lives?

Christianity is all-pervasive, or it is non-existent. We cannot have our faith in Jesus on our schedule, according to our desires and will, rather than God's. Either we desire what He does and seek it at all times, or we are serving someone or something other than Him.

Longing unweariedly with heavenly desires begins in seeing with the eye of the heart into that unseen realm where Christ rules, angels fulfill His bidding, and His Church is being gathered to Him in glory. It grows from such contemplation to infuse our daily experience with the reign of Kingdom Jesus here and now in a way that refracts the realities of then and there.

And if we long unweariedly for the courts of the Lord, and to do His will, we will find this longing to be a source of such deep-seated joy, peace, purpose, and power that no one and nothing will be able to take it away from us.

For this is why we have been created; for this we have been redeemed: To know God in His glory and to live out that relationship unweariedly to the praise of the glory of His grace.

Today at The Fellowship of Ailbe

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