Tell me what you want, what you really, really want!

I enjoy reading.  Before Kindle and e readers became all the fad I typically kept about 6 books 'going' at all times.  Now that number seems to have tripled.  A bit overwhelming.  So, with all those unfinished reads stored in my e-library, I have no idea why I decided to pick up a book my wife has been reading.  I am, however, glad I did.

I do not intend to read the entire book.  However, as I opened to a page toward the back of the book my eyes were drawn to a paragraph which Melissa had already underlined.  The paragraph opens with a question I have been unable to shake since it confronted me three days ago. 

PAUSE . . .

The pause is for you; the reader of this blog.  If you do not want to be confronted by your own lack of desire for a truly God ward life (as was I), then the pause is your chance to get out.  It is a side door.  An open window.  An evacuation route.  An escape hatch.  Take it.  Take it now!  Go back to whatever you were doing before you decided to 'kill a moment of time' by reading this blog.  Go read that headline you have already read a dozen times.  Go play that game you have played for the last decade of your life . . .

Now, for those of you who have not taken the escape hatch I am going to quote the paragraph in its entirety.  It will form the final section of this blog.  Though you may choose not to linger with these words, I suspect they will linger with you!

How badly do I want the deep communion? . . . Communion with God, what was broken in the Garden, this is wholly restored when I want the God-communion more than I want the world-consumption.  What that first and catastrophic sin of ingratitude ruptured, what that one bite of the forbidden fruit stole from those fully alive - union - can be repaired by exact inverse of the Garden; lifestyle gratitude and a willingness to eat of the bread He gives in this moment.  How badly do I want to return to perfect Paradise, walk with God in the cool of the evening, be fully alive?  "O my soul, thou art capable of enjoying God, woe to thee if thou art contented with anything less than God,"  Francis de  Sales gently, rightly urges.  Does earth have anything I desire but Him?  I have to ask it.  And I know the answer. . .

Taken from, One Thousand Gifts, pages 220-221, by Ann Voskamp.

the shape of Desire

Biz