Why I Desire, in the Twilight of Evening.

I’ve written about this topic before. But I can never find all the words needed to convey what I am saying.

(Photo Credit)

Tonight’s mild temperatures and purple skies create a beautiful January evening, inviting me outside.

I step into the calmness and only then remember the deep ache that such an evening reveals. Longing and desire demands my attention. Longing and desire that I live trying to avoid.

Longing cries out for companionship.
Desire whispers for the intimacy of being fully known.
Ache craves healing touch.

Describing longing and desire as an ache is not mere poetic language. My chest physically aches with longing. I feel desire in the depths of my stomach. Is this what the Old Testament describes as a yearning in the bowels?

This ache is written into my spiritual DNA. It is the ancient memory of Adam and Eve walking with God in the cool of the evening. It is the knowledge that they knew what I long to know.

Adam and Eve knew spiritual intimacy; they were walking and talking with God.
They knew the emotional intimacy of being fully known; they were walking and talking with God.
They knew the healing touch of holy and naked intimacy. They were walking and talking with God.

This beautiful evening carries a sadness recorded long ago in my soul. Sadness that reflects Adam and Eve’s tears shed as they were forced to leave the place where they knew God intimately. My sadness is a shadow of God’s wound as He chose to pay the price so that intimacy would be restored.

Here is my hope on this beautiful evening. My longing and desire for what should have been, is also anticipation for what yet will be. I will be fully known and fully knowing, naked and yet fully clothed, in intimacy with Jesus.

So this longing is not really for a friend’s companionship, nice as that would be. My desire is not really for a lover’s pure intimacy, even though that desire is God-given. No, my longing on this beautiful evening is to walk in companionship with my Creator, as Adam and Eve once did.

I want to hear Him speak a word that I cannot yet grasp, but crave. A beautiful word that touches and heals the ache of evening and anticipates intimacy to come.

I wait to hear my Father speak, “Son.”