Leighton Ford rhetorically asks in Chapter 8 of The Attentive Life if we wake up in the world with a “holy longing” for the Kingdom of God that is “already” and “not yet”. Ronald Rollheiser writes of this “holy longing” in his book The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality:
“Sensing that we are incomplete . . . cut off, a little piece of something was once part of a whole . . . we experience ourselves as white or yolk, separated from the other half.”
In other words, our holy longing that fuels our restlessness is at its core “a longing for the God who made us for himself.” Mr. Ford quips that his legs are very restless when he sleeps. Yet restlessness appears in our waking lives as well. For example, those of us whom God has called to leadership positions in ministry or the secular workplace often aren’t easily satisfied or willing to take things for granted.
The author cites French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who observed that most of our human problems arise because we don’t know how to sit still for one hour. As Mr. Ford astutely adds: “Restless legs are one thing; a restless heart is quite another.”
Today’s question: Is restlessness a spot-on description of your heart as you journey through your desert, transition time? How can seeking God quell that restlessness? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “From restlessness to restfulness”
