Over the summer I spent six weeks
in Heaven. Woops, not Heaven; I mean Slovenia. The country of Slovenia is a
delicious little hot pot of castles, European charms, and mountainous,
clear-watered, cavernous goodness. It’s so gorgeous it’s stupid.
I remember a conversation I had
with a girl at the Philosophy Faculty at the University of Ljubljana about
satisfaction. She said that as soon as we get something, we either want
something more or we despise what we finally have. Por ejemplo, imagine a piece
of chocolate cake (my apologies, fellow chocoholics). Mmmm, chocolate
cake. Chocolate cake sounds so utterly satisfying, doesn't it? If I could just have a
little bite of moist, melty, chocolate cake then perhaps life would finally feel
complete. I probably ruined that word picture by using the word moist but whatever. Chocolate cake. But
the thing is, as soon as I get chocolate cake, I either walk away desiring
more but denying myself the indulgence or I indulge entirely and walk away
uncomfortably full. Has anyone ever actually had a perfectly satisfying
quantity of chocolate cake? Because that is a life experience I’ve yet to have.
Maybe I have an unhealthy affection
for chocolate cake and maybe that’s a dumb example (or maybe it’s Maybelline),
but the point this girl was making was that nothing in life, even down to our
simplest desires, is satisfying. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” but it
seems like hope fulfilled is just as sickening.
I thought a lot about that
conversation while I was walking through the Škocjan Caves that weekend in Southern Slovenia. The
caves were… cavernous. They were absolutely breathtaking—we’d seen beautiful
landscapes and cottages buried affectionately in rolling hills of infinite
green, but compared to the vast, dark mystery of the caves, those scenes seemed
petty. There, in the recesses of the earth, God was just showing off. But the
whole time, all I could think about was how I could possibly bottle that beauty
up and just wallow in it forever. Cameras couldn’t have captured it. Any
description of it sounds limp. But it was like I couldn’t just be satisfied
looking at it in that moment. I wanted to bind up the sounds and sights and
sensations and package them perfectly away in my memory.
It was there that I realized the connection between
beauty and desire. Beauty is a desire because it’s unsatisfying. It leaves us
grasping to capture it and dwell in it forever but it’s impossible. Even if we
could live surrounded by that kind of beauty for life, we would become conditioned
to it and the beauty would lose its beautifulness in the familiarity.
And it’s the same with chocolate cake. It’s the same
with people. It’s the same with grace. It’s the same with unfulfilled dreams.
Life is beautiful and so life, my friends, is unsatisfying.
It is a constant wanting.
That’s frustrating for me as a believer in the
gospel of Jesus because I often feel like the Christian life is supposed to
satisfy me. I feel like I’m supposed to sit around without any kind of want or
desire for anything. “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.” But…
I’m not satisfied.
Gasp! Christian girl says what? Forgive my sarcasm, but see, even if I am entirely wrong and
Jesus is not God, that wouldn’t change the fact that life isn’t satisfying!
It’s too late for me to lie to myself in romantic optimism—the (perhaps bluntly
morbid) truth is that life is hard and then we all die. But if Jesus is true,
then hope is a real thing. And would give an answer for this feeling of desire I constantly have that I'm not fit for anything here. I've been created for something--Someone--else entirely.
And so, if our experience (yes, even in our
relationship with Jesus) in this life were entirely satisfying, leaving us
desiring nothing more, then there would be no point in Heaven or in faith.
My point is not at all to diminish the beauty of
Jesus, but perhaps expand our imaginations a bit. In Heaven we will
experience full satisfaction for the
first time. Ever. Can you even imagine that? No one in the history of
humanity has ever experienced full satisfaction: a total lack of wanting in any form along with full peace, joy, and purpose—the fact that we even have a
word for it kind of amazes me.
This is why I yearn for Heaven. Because until we
encounter Jesus as fully, resurrected sinless beings, we will never know hope
fulfilled. The hopes we have in this life will always be like Gatsby’s green
light flickering from across the lake: dim and disappointing when finally they
are realized. They’re like Olympians stepping off the podium and being ruined
for having accomplished everything they’d ever strived for. If I had no faith in
Heaven or in the existence of God then I’d have to live with the fact that life
has never satisfied me and never will and so all is just “meaningless,
meaningless…a chasing after the wind.” But because of my hope in Heaven, I can
stare fearlessly into the face of life and say, “You don’t make me happy. And
I’m okay with that because being with God in eternity will.” That’s why Paul
said that “if only for this life we hope in Christ, we are to be pitied above
all men.” Sure, you can write me off as being a pessimistic cynic (and sure, maybe there's some truth in that) but if I said anything else, I don't think it would be honest.
Beauty in Heaven will not be a desire. It will
simply be beauty and we will be able to enjoy it timelessly to the glory of
God. It is the only hope fulfilled that could not possibly disappoint because
it will be fulfilled forever. “For in this hope we are saved. But hope that is
seen is no hope at all. For who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope
for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently.”
I wait for the day when Jesus will redefine Beauty.
