desire

"...You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can't, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can't get the best out of it. 'Now! Let's have a real good talk' reduces everyone to silence. 'I must get a good sleep tonight' ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum...?

- C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed p. 45

"The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear. On the other hand, 'Knock and it shall be opened.' But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac? ...Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity [to receive]."

- C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed p. 46

Can we want something too much, even if it is a good thing? Is it possible to bang too hard on the door? I wonder how often it is that I pray so hard for something and yet forget to be still and listen. This leads to a very important point: Is not listening just as important as asking, if not more so?

C S Lewis makes another point: we can say with words that we want something, but can we really know how serious we are unless we have to choose, unless something is truly at stake? Honestly, I wish sometimes the Lord would just choose for me, but I've found he typically doesn't. He wants me to choose, to struggle, to learn, and to choose again. Of course he is there to inspire and to impress, but I must make the choice. I have to step into the dark in order to see the light. To the brother of Jared, the Lord asked, 'what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?' In other words, 'What do you want me to do?' When the saints were building the Salt Lake Temple, the Lord allow the saints to work so arduously to build the foundation, only to find out later that it was flawed, causing them to start anew. Nephi and his brother were commanded to retrieve the plates of brass, yet the first two tries failed miserably almost leading to there death. The question is, Why? Why didn't the Lord simply inspire them to know? Why let them choose? I can say in all honesty, I don't know, but I suspect there is something to be learned in choosing, in make our own choices. I don't know for sure, but what I do know is the Lord has a purpose and reason for everything he does.

Ultimately, he is guiding me so that I may become the man he needs me to be. He does not pull or prod, but as a shepherd, He leads me to green pastures.

Am I willing to listen? Am I willing to step into the darkness in order to see the light?