when desire comes

“I can’t wait for Christmas,” Alec told me the other day. “I will get my stocking and open my presents.” Then he recited his wish list.

“You know,” I responded, “Christmas is not about the presents…and it’s likely you won’t get the presents you want anyway.”

He was quiet for a moment, thinking this through. Then he brightened.

“Then I can hardly wait for my birthday!”

What we truly love is evidenced by what we truly hope for.

(That leaves me wondering about Alec…)

Sure, there are the trivial loves…those fleeting objects of our affection that seem to take a great deal of our mental and emotional well-being. Next time you’re in a casual conversation with someone (or eavesdropping on the one in the next aisle), hone in on what is actually being said. We desire a relaxing weekend, a reprieve from bickering children, a paycheck that covers the bills, appliances that aren’t broken, a great deal on a sale item, a spouse that does the “honey-do,” the accomplishment of an empty laundry basket by day’s end…

These are cheap, vaporous loves…and they likely won’t be remembered by next week, if even by tomorrow, wafting away into the oblivion of our own forgetfulness as new loves take their place. Dollar Store purchases of the heart that add up over time and drain our emotional bank—giving us less to offer for more substantial investments.

Cheap love; cheap hope.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick. But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12).

It doesn’t take much to perceive Solomon is not referring to a relaxing weekend.

The truth is, most of us instinctively have meaningful hope because most of us know meaningful love—something beyond the cheap and vaporous. It seems our deepest desires become obvious when this love is threatened. We desire a wayward child to return, a relationship to be restored, pain to be relieved, sickness healed, a sinner saved. An engagement desires the wedding day, a weary traveler desires home, separation longs for reunion.

We live, die, and sacrifice for this kind of love. It defines our existence.

(Dollar Store love indeed. Why do we devote so much of ourselves to that anyway?)

When this substantial love—and its hopes—are deferred, how sick at heart we become.

Perhaps you are there, in that place of aching sorrow and hidden tears. Where the descent of a dark night penetrates your soul and the reality of the morning is a heavy weight, pinning you to the bed. A place of disappointment and disillusionment...and of loneliness.

There, in that place of deferred hope, is where we are offered the desired fulfilled: the “tree of life.”

It is not, as you might expect, the desire fulfilled. It is not “what you always wanted.”

But then again,

It is.

Because it is there, in that depth, that Jesus comes. He, the Man of Sorrows, seeks you out in the midst of your broken heart and offers an intimate part of Himself that He will not offer in any other circumstance. In other words, without deferred hope, there is a part of Jesus you will never know. He, the Grief-Bearer and Pain-Sufferer, comes softly and extends a personal invitation: “Come, know Me in the fellowship of My sufferings.”

Will you refuse such an invitation?

And so, you take His offered hand and sit beside Him in the midst of your deferred hopes and shattered dreams. Look at Him. Take note of His gentleness, absorb His restfulness, sink into His strong arms. When you gaze into His face, His eyes glistening with tears that match your own, you will find there a sweetness no words can describe, a comfort strangely powerful. And when this happens, you will find no response other than praise, which, surprisingly, brings welcome relief.

When you are able, He will help you stand, and walk…forward, through that Baca Valley…

until you must sit once more with Him and start afresh, allowing Him to fill your dry and wasted pools of hope yet again.

You see, we are indeed filled with many loves. Most are fleeting. Some are deep and meaningful.

All may be deferred.

Except One.

Jesus: our One, un-deferred Hope. Call to Him. He is near. And when He comes, in the midst of our sickened hearts, stooped by anguish and barren from grief, He brings the quickening, the quenching…the life.

He is the Tree of Life.

What an invitation.

The blessed hope yet deferred, is being fully with Him—our One Hope—in His presence, beholding His glory. Oh for a heart that is made sick with this deference! Oh for a soul that aches profusely for that moment! “My heart is undivided for You, O Lord! My heart and my flesh cry out for You. I will hope continually as I wait for You.”*

How we rejoice to receive the gift of Christ’s first coming to earth! May we look forward, with passionate longing, with vehement desire, with eager anticipation, to His glorious second coming, when, at last, every hope is fulfilled—forever and forevermore.

“Come, Thou long expected Jesus…

Hope of all the earth Thou art,

Dear desire of every nation,

Joy of every longing heart.”

*from Psalms 86, 84, 71 and 130