A New Series entitled: Divine Desire
love must needs be miserable and full of trouble and disquietude,
when there is not worth and excellency enough in the object to
answer the vastness of its capacity: so eager and violent
a passion can not but fret and torment the spirit, when it
finds not wherewith to satisfy its cravings.
- Henry Scougal in The Life of God in the Soul of Man, 66-67.
If Henry Scougal is right, it is no wonder that Americans are so very unhappy. Only the eternal, unconditional love of God can satisfy the cravings of the human soul yet human beings continually set their affection on people or things that don’t have the capacity to “answer the vastness of its [humanity’s desire for love] capacity”. This unhappiness is clearly evidenced in the discontent that pervades our lives. We have believed the Madison Avenue or Hollywood lie that something or someone on this planet could fulfill us and make us completely, unendingly happy. We have spent our lives trying to discover such a love, only to be continually dissatisfied. Adam and Eve’s disillusionment has been passed onto their children like mounting waves preceding a perfect storm of our own making.
Each successive generation has attempted to satisfy the eternal by obtaining the temporal. The progression of continual disappointments has multiplied itself until the dam of discontent has burst, flooding our twenty-first century lives in an uncontrollable and insatiable demand to be happy, satisfied and fulfilled. Our first parents’ desire has become their children’s demand and the result has been disastrous for the human race. The greatness of this desire is superseded only by the disappointment of the fruitless search. We have examined every nook and cranny of the planet only to find ourselves exasperated and angry with “eager and violent a passion”, primarily because only the love of God can fill “the vastness” of our capacity to be loved.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:48 am
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November 13th, 2008 at 3:00 am
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