Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of spices!”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, August 19, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I am in touch with longing. I have experienced the ache of wanting to be with my beloved when time and distance have kept us apart. I have felt the intense pull of yearning for a closer relationship with God, which for me is borne out in that spiritual act of creativity. I can feel the anticipation in bride’s call to her groom to hurry home so they can be together once again. C.S. Lewis wrote of Sehnsucht, the German word for longing, as a haunting sense of yearning for some unknown thing, but which is inextricably connected with joy. In Surprised by Joy he writes, “Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” This is the kind of longing I feel when I read the bride’s urging for her beloved to return to her as quickly as possible. And this is the kind of longing that in many ways makes life profoundly beautiful.
What do I most long for in my life? How does God fulfill my longing?
