We know that we are made “of God” because nothing in the world, none of the elements or aspects of our present existence, fully satisfy us. If we were merely finite creatures and nothing more, then finite things would make us as happy as we could possibly be.
But we know that this is not the case. We long for the transcendent, a love greater than the loves we find in this world, a justice we intuit but never experience fully, and beauty and goodness that are glimpsed as traces of something more. The list goes on.
Every good we experience is imperfect, and we realize this eventually. Even if we feel fulfilled initially, the natural longing of our spirit is for what the Spirit hints at, and is not yet come. We long for what we cannot find.
He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11
Essentially, we are mortal creatures longing for the eternal, which suggests that we are not as finite as it might seem at frist. We are, by the nature given to us, destined for more than can be found in this world.
As St. Augustine prayed, “we are restless until we find rest in you.” Our sinful inclinations and destructive habits not withstanding, we have a natural longing for the eternal, the divine, the infinite, and the true.
Thus, we find ourselves in a maddening predicament: we innately seek the kingdom of God, even if we don’t know to call it that, and yet it is always coming and has not fully arrived. We seek a reign of God and what it would mean to live under it, but we cannot find it in fullness.
Now I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 1 Corinthians 15:50
The impossibility of completely experiencing the life of God, in our present finite and limited existence, could be cause for exasperation and despair. However, the Spirit of God in us, the same instigator of this desire for the eternal, is the author of our faith by the grace of love and teaches us to wrest hope from what otherwise would be barren landscapes of despair. This unmet longing is not only for God, but of God.
The substance of our hope is that we are living the eternal life with God here and now, that God is with us in this imperfect and temporal condition. In fact, is God not experiencing the same unmet desires with us, whose Spirit groans in us and with us? The cross tells us that God is!
Do we want to be with God in this shared sorrow, or do we long for bliss more than God? If God is with us, should we not be with God in his being with is? Our unfulfilled longing, the finite for the infinite, mirrors the unmet longing of God for our finiteness to be brought within his infinite life.
This is the incarnation, that we are experiencing the same desire for the perfect as God from “the other side” of the relationship. We diesre the perfection that is in God, and God longs for that same reality, and by grace is bringing it to be. Our sense of wanting more than is present, is the effect of the presence of God in us.
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