Your Heart's Desire

Sometimes our desires are too small.

Our dog Gracie has lost a step or two. She’s nine, and she has only recently recovered from cancer. Still, she enjoys coming along with Joy and me for the first mile of our early morning walks. After we drop her back at the house, we strike out again. Our focus turns from encouraging chatter with Gracie to what’s on our own hearts and minds.

Recently I shared that I was feeling discouraged. Once upon a time I would have looked for relief. My strategy would have been to offload that feeling by complaining or by anesthetizing myself with a glass—well, glasses—of wine.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit that this crystallizes what had once been my spirituality, even though I professed Christianity with my lips at the time. The real object of my desire was my own comfort.

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St. Paul could have been talking about me when he said, “Their god is the belly; … their minds are set on earthly things.” (Philippians 3:18-19) In other words, if we’re going to be honest, I had a secular spirituality. My spirituality today is radically different. But before saying more, I should explain some things about spirituality.

Everybody has a spirituality. Even committed atheists who want nothing to do with religion of any sort. That’s because desire is life’s animating force for all of us. And as the spiritual writer Ronald Rolheiser explains, “What we do with our longings … is our spirituality.” (The Holy Longing, p. 5).

Contrary to what some people may believe, Christian spirituality is not about the suppression of our desires. Rather, Jesus urges us to devote every ounce of our being to connecting with our heart’s desire. What distinguishes Christian from secular spirituality is the object of our heart’s desire.

Secular spirituality’s focus remains on something attainable by us in space, time, and history. Celebrities crave applause for their performances, for instance. Tons of people live for approval. Power, wealth, pleasure, fame, career success. Social change and personal creative expression. These are all candidates for the secular heart’s desire. They can become the singular, animating, life-shaping purpose of our existence.

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And let me be clear. None of these desires is in and of itself bad. On the contrary, all of them can be good. But they are intermediate goods. They are good because they lead to something else. For example, power is good when we use it to elevate the lives of others. But the pursuit of power for its own sake devolves into the domination of others. It dehumanizes the one who is dominated and debases the soul of the one exercising power in that way.

To put it simply, Jesus teaches us to choose our heart’s desire wisely. Our most common mistake is to treat intermediate goods as if they were ultimate. C. S. Lewis describes it like this:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

Jesus, you see, was a fan of desire. He urged his followers to be full-hearted, not half-hearted. Think of the summary of the law: love the Lord your God with your whole heart. Love your neighbor as if your well-being and theirs were inseparable. And get a load of this: “Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:16) In other words, be all in. Hold nothing back. So long as you are clear about what is ultimate. About what is a worthy heart’s desire.

For Christians, our heart’s desire is Transcendent. Not something that we can achieve or attain for ourselves in this life. Our heart’s desire is a union with God that transforms us into who we yearn to be but could not accomplish on our own. That union is accomplished in Jesus Christ.

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And that this union occurs in Christ tells us something crucial about the Transcendent. It is not the beyond in the sense of escape from this world. On the contrary, it is the beyond that has, with unfathomable humility, descended into this world. Andrew Root refers to this as an in-breaking of the divine into ordinary experience. An in-breaking that transforms us here and now.

And this brings us back to my conversation with Joy about my feelings of discouragement. Years ago, I would have sought relief or escape. Today, I turn to Jesus with a question. “What is the life-transforming lesson that you can teach me in this experience?”

And the answer, it seems to me, is perseverance. Perseverance is the capacity of our soul to endure and overcome, with God’s help, the adverse winds of our present circumstances. Through adversity and setbacks, in the face of fear and heartache, Jesus does far more than teach us the concept of perseverance. He makes us into people who persevere. And through whom his grace will flow into the world.

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Wherever is Your Heart by Brandi Carlile