Shallow Desire

I was reading the story of the woman healed from an issue of blood recently (Mark 5:21-34), and something new struck me. This woman had been been bleeding for twelve years. She had spent everything she had on physicians, but nothing helped. Finally she determined to see Jesus. "If I can only touch his clothes, just the hem of his garment, I will be healed," she said (v. 28). And so she did, and so she was. Imagine, though, if she had wanted more. Instead of grabbing his robe in a crowd, what if she had sought him out privately, spoken to him face to face for an extended amount of time? What if she had wanted as much Jesus as possible instead of just enough to get by?

We all desire shallow things, things are just good enough, things that will only satisfy us temporarily. We pay outrageous prices for fancy meals, sports tickets, concerts, you name it -- far too much money for such limited experiences. Rarely, however, do we truly crave anything more: hours of deep conversation, true friendships, committed marriages. Rarer still do we express deep desire for the eternal things: God, heaven, and salvation. We don't want permanent things, even if they alone can bring us true and lasting joy. C.S. Lewis put it this way: "It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

This week, deepen your desires. Seek the holiday at the sea, infinite joy, eternal things, as much Jesus as you can get. Don't be content with the temporal, shallow things of this world. Go beyond. Go deeper.