But I NEED it!!!

When I was little…like oh say 15 years ago, my mother explained to me as I was about to throw a tantrum in Toys R Us, “You don’t need it. You want it.” That got me thinking. What is a need? What is a want, for that matter? And why is it that wanting to have that new pink and sparkly toy doesn’t get me anywhere when needing nap time lets me go right to bed?

I think the same is true of desiring and longing. Longing is the need of the emotional world. While I may desire (want) a slice of pizza, but thirty to forty years from now the desire I feel for the slice now will no longer exist. Longing is something that stands the test of time. It's not some infatuation that lasts a few days and then never returns. It takes years to build.

Cornelius Plantinga calls us to have this longing for God in the book Engaging God’s World. He claims that from this longing comes hope. I think that this is true…but I do not believe that hope is a product of longing alone. I think that our hope can also be inspired by the hope we see in others.

They say the road to faith is a journey. I believe that while longing for the end of that journey is important, I feel that it is just as important to enjoy the path itself. Not for the cheep roadside theme-parks, but for the people in the car with you. I think that building the longing that fuels the car is something that must be done with others, but the hope is something that fuels you and keeps you in the car.

While longing gets you where you need to go, I feel that without hope, without other people around you to give and receive hope, longing then becomes a curse. God gives us hope…which we could say stems from our longing for Him, as a tool to commune with others and build that hope. And while Plantinga doesn’t say this, I feel that I must mention that hope is not something that should not be horded for self-served longing, but rather, shared to support the burden of maintaining that longing with others.

So in closing, I hope this weekend finds everyone reaching out to people on their floors or in their apartment to invite their fellow students to engage in building hope. It can be as simple as inviting someone to see a movie or play a card game. Inclusion builds hope, and I feel that while building longing is personal, building hope needs to be public.