Divine Desire #3
Scougal went on to say that “as divine love doth advance and elevate the soul; so it is that alone which can make it happy” (IBID, page 66). In other words, the only way to be happy in this life is to acknowledge another more important Life; the life of God. Your soul needs a Savior. Divine love creates a great soul. Divine love fulfills the human soul. Me first must be transformed into Him first. The most direct route to earthly contentment is to acknowledge and receive God’s divine, unconditional love. Until a soul accepts that love, it can only be “miserable and full of trouble and disquietude.” This is because only the eternal expanse of God’s incalculable love can “answer the vastness of its (the soul’s) capacity…when it finds not wherewith (on this earth) to satisfy its cravings.” That’s because we were created to live for eternity. God created us for Himself. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “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.” (Mere Christianity, 106)
Nothing on earth can provide the happiness a human being seeks. God has set eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and only eternity is big enough to fill the void that longs for God. Nothing less than eternity will satisfy and please a people who possess a subconscious memory of God’s presence in Eden and long for that perfect relationship to be reestablished. “Your kingdom come” (Luke 16:2) is a prayer whose timeless source isn’t just a longing for an enchanting future but the memory of a glorious past. Every fairy tale is the expressed desire for what once was, to once again exist as what will be. It is what Pascal called an “empty trace”. We long to be loved by God.