A Sense of Longing
November 11, 2024
A Sense of Longing
by Jason Neill
Scripture reading: Ecclesiastes 3:11; John 6
What do you long for? More money? Happiness? Peace? Confidence? The perfect vacation where there aren’t any obstacles to prevent you from arriving at your destination, and no one asks, “are we there yet?”
This sense of longing was the theme of C.S. Lewis’ life. He called it “Joy.” You must understand that “Joy” is not gladness or elation nor the satisfaction of a desire but a special kind of intense longing he felt, beginning in childhood, for something he could not quite put his finger on. Lewis describes this encounter with “Joy” in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy:
“Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew. What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature – not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to ‘enormous’) comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? Not certainly, for a biscuit tin filled with moss, nor even for my own past and before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison” (pp. 7 & 16).
Lewis would later develop this idea of longing as an argument for the existence of God. “Joy,” as he put it, was a signpost pointing him toward God. He writes in Mere Christianity: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world” (p. 114).
Lewis is not the first author to express a sense of longing that nothing in this world may satisfy. Saint Augustine, who lived in the 4th century, after converting to Christianity, wrote in his most famous book Confessions which is his prayer toward God: “You have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you” (p. 14).
It seems that our longings, no matter how small or big, are really indicators for something greater. Our restlessness is a signpost to first move us along to be in relationship with God by believing in Jesus of Nazareth for everlasting life. We move from being spiritually dead to spiritual life; however, it doesn’t stop there. Once we are a son or daughter of God, we long to see Him who saved us face to face. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else” (see Lewis’ chapter on Heaven in The Problem of Pain). Your longing, and mine, can only be satisfied by Jesus of Nazareth.
For more on this topic, I recommend the following resources: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis, and The Confessions by Saint Augustine.