Essence and Satisfication

"You have created us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." ~ St. Augustine

With the encouragement of a new friend, who helpfully reminded me last night of the importance of writing down what we learn and think and wrestle with,  I'm back to LR! Lately, I've been wrestling a lot with the above quote. It's so brief, with so many implications, and it addresses so many things I struggle with on the regular.

First off, God has created us for Himself. How often do I believe that statement? When I think about a typical day in my life, it's often filled with thoughts about what I need to get done to make myself successful and happy. Even when I think more deeply about things, it's often so self-centered: why do I not have deeper relationships with my friends? Why do I struggle with loneliness despite the plethora of wonderful people the Lord has surrounded me with? What purpose/project has the Lord created me for? What type of woman has the Lord created me to be? While a lot of these really aren't bad, they miss the point - God created me to be in relationship with Him. Period. It so easy to forget that the Lord made me for himself and not His gifts!

And secondly, our hearts are restless until they rest in  God.  If you're anything like me, you've got one response to this phrase: preach! I am the absolutely worst about pursuing other things to satisfy me - new clothes, good grades, a successful career, some sort of delicious dark chocolate, boys - really anything will do. One lesson I can NEVER make myself remember is that the Lord is the only thing that will satisfy me. One of the sweetest ways that my fellow Christians sisters serve me is by reminding me through their examples and encouragement that the Lord is the only thing that truly satisfies. One of my favorite strategiesto combat this "forgetfulness" of the Lord's goodness is used by the Israelites: constant repetition of the miraculous things the Lord has done for them in Psalm and story. Just reminds me that we all should have our own story about the goodness of the Lord in our own lives.

A final favorite phrase to bring it home: 

Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. ~ Westminister Catechisms