Wish for What You Have – Not for What You Don’t

Dear Friends,

I believe the health of your soul deserves serious attention.  Why?  Because even if the world around you caves in – your money, job, physical health, you name it – a healthy soul will always sustain you and give you joy even when the “outside” of your life looks (at least to others) like it’s crumbling.  That being the case, I’d like to share with you something I’ve come to believe can be absolutely detrimental to the health of your soul.  Some call it want.  Some call it greed.  But whatever name you give it, it’s that sickness deep within us that is never satisfied with what we have.  It’s that spirit that says, “Yes, I’m financially taken care of – but I really want to get the next level – and I’ll do whatever it take to get there,” or “Yeah, my wife is hot and we have a good sex life, but man that woman I work with – I wouldn’t mind…,” or (for all the pastors out there) “My church is stable, healthy and growing – even when most churches these days are in decline – but I can’t rest until we get to ‘mega-church’ status,” or “I have lots of nice outfits in the closet, but I just have to have a new one.”

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I know that there’s such a thing as a healthy or godly discontent (i.e. you have a horrible marriage, you’re distraught about it, and you want to work hard to make it better), but that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m taking about when your happiness, peace, joy, etc. can’t be sustained unless you “have more.”  Whether the issue is money, sex, power, success, influence, popularity, stuff, etc. – the disease is the same regardless of the manifestation.  As evidenced by your lack of peace, your soul is not healthy.  It feels bad – and you try to make it feel better by distracting it with “stuff.”  But this never works.  You may get that job, but if your soul isn’t healthy, you’ll lose your peace until you get a promotion.  You may finally get that boat – but sooner or later you’ll start noticing that it’s not big enough – and you’ll experience serious unrest until you get the bigger one.  Maybe you can bench press more that 90% of the guys your size in America, but somehow, you can’t be happy until you can get to the 95^th percentile.  Do you see what I mean?  It’s a never ending rabbit-chasing endeavor – a cycle that will only end with your death.  Why live that way?  Why not learn to wish for what you do have rather than for what you don’t have?

Dante’s Inferno is arguably the greatest poem of all time.  In it, Dante is guided on a tour of hell, purgatory, and heaven – in that order.  Near the end of the poem, Dante is in heaven and encounters a woman who, though she is in heaven, is a good distance away from God’s throne.  There are many, many people who are closer.  Dante asks her, “Don’t you ever wish you were closer to the throne?”  In other words, “Doesn’t it bug you that you are so far away while so many people are so close?”  The woman’s answer was, in the eyes of T.S. Eliot, the most beautiful single verse in the history of poetry.  I’ll let you read it in the original for yourself, but the woman’s response was basically this:  “In heaven, things are different.  Here, we don’t wish for what we don’t have – we wish for what we do have.  And what we have is a life in the center of God’s will, and,” and here’s the beautiful part, “in His will is our peace.”

Think about that.  God makes available to each of us those greatest of blessings – His presence, His will, and His peace – but somehow we think that other things – things that are “external” to our own souls – will bring peace and contentment to our souls.  This is crazy!  Our souls are not made of the physical order of things and they won’t be strengthened by anything in the physical order.  To have the life, peace, contentment and joy that we were made by God to have, we must go outside of the physical order.  We must go to God directly – but to do that, we have make Him #1 and put in their place all the selfish pursuits that may have little to do with Him.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t work for a promotion, but I am saying that if my peace is in a promotion, I should probably take a leave of absence and get spiritually healthy before I lose my soul to a pursuit which, in 10,000 years, won’t mean jack squat.  Remember what Jesus said:

“And he said to them, ^‘Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’” (Luke 12:15)

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)

Here’s the point:  Your soul is the most important part of who you are.  It’s not that your job, wealth, sex life, etc. are not important things – it’s just that they are far less important and far more temporal than the life and health of your soul.  That being the case, take the other things for what they are – but don’t make them more important than they are.  Definitely do not look for your peace in them – because the moment you gain peace in “things,” your sick soul will begin looking for the “next thing” to satisfy it because you have refused to satisfy it with the only thing that can ultimately satisfy it: vibrant communion with God.  I’ll write more on that later, but for now – ask yourself, “Am I the kind of person whose contentment is based on situations and stuff?  Or is it based on on the healthy and vitality of my soul?”

My prayer for all who are reading this post (and that’s you!) is that you’ll be receptive to God’s voice, as He says to you, “Wish for what you have – not for what you don’t have, and in such wishes find a healthy soul, and in finding a healthy soul, find my will, and in finding my will, find your peace.”

Yours,
Jason