Encouragement

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In earlier years of my marriage, with two young sons in tow, my husband worked on navy survey boats based in Rockingham, Western Australia. He would spend most of the year deployed in Australian waters, far from the home front, for up to nine months at a time. A shorter deployment was only six months. The first year he left, we bought a freshly subdivided house block together just days before his ship departed and upon returning I welcomed him to our new home (and handed him a shovel to help me with landscaping!). Darling hubby had escaped all the details and demands that go with the house construction process.

These extended periods away from maintaining a family and settling into a new home were difficult – for all concerned. The longing to be a part of one another's lives grew stronger as the days stretched into months. Juggling responsibilities at home and then hearing about how his family was doing via mail or the rare phone call was difficult for us both and intensified our yearning to be reunited.

But such were the conditions that cemented a solid future together. Longing, tested by difficult circumstances is the very means in which relationships can be deepened, and whereby two, who are separated, become one in spirit.

Quaker, John Woolman once said, ‘I have felt tender breathings in my soul for God.’ Though we may long for those who are dear to us in this life, or even those who have left us, as God’s people, will long first and foremost for Him, the purest lover of our soul. Like the deer that pants for the flowing stream, so we thirst for the living Spring, even when we are not aware of this. For only God, knows us well enough to quench our parched soul’s thirst for sweet fellowship and intimacy with Him.

No other one we may long for will satisfy our deepest desires, deepest longings, and deepest questions. What we really long for is fellowship with the Divine. Life finds meaning, questions around identity and purpose find answers, and emptiness finds wholeness when our longing is directed to God alone. Jan Richardson, in ‘The Sanctuary of Women’ sums this up well. ‘Desire, longing and yearning, hunger, hankering and ache: may we know the presence of God, who alone makes His home in each of these.

Let our longing lead us to our true home. Let the homing instincts of the soul direct us back to the One we long for, the One whom we seek, the One who is constantly seeking us.


Reflective Moments

When I listen within to my place of deepest spiritual knowing, what is it I most long for?

What do my spiritual longings reveal about God’s hopes for me?

Do I understand my spiritual longings as a gift and a nudge from God and do I act upon them?

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