Fast 40: Practicing the Ancient Spiritual Discipline of Lentಮಾದರಿ

Mick Jagger once said, "I can't get no satisfaction." Put a little more literally (and meaningfully), C. S. Lewis once wrote, "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."

But Jagger had it at least half right. The world, even at its best, offers nothing but a temporary fix. Sex becomes boring or debased. Food becomes sewage or waste. Money becomes spent or superfluous. Fashion becomes old or useless. Politics become limited or corrupt. Everything in the world is either dying or dead! Even our marriages are doomed, which is why we say, "Till death do us part." Nothing the world offers lasts forever.

I remember sitting next to an old, rich Jewish businessman while flying to Paris. He told me, "I've decided to spend all of my money before I die because what they say is true: 'You can't take it with you.'" That man finally realized the emptiness of worldliness at the end of his life (and in a quite cynical sense), but imagine how helpful and wonderful it would be to realize that truth while we are young and free.

Imagine our satisfaction, our happiness, our joy if we could realize that the answer to the temporary is the eternal, that the point of the shadow is the image. As St. Augustine said, "You have made us, O Lord, for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You."