Longing for JoySample

Our Longing for Joy

Have you ever missed something without even knowing what it is? It’s like nostalgia—a longing for what once was but is no more. Nostalgia reminisces about childhood and moments like staying up to count the stars. Similarly, we experience a forward-oriented longing for something unknown yet strangely familiar. This longing carries a pang, a deep sorrow, a yearning that may feel just out of reach. In German, it’s called Sehnsucht: a deep desire or craving that may never be fulfilled.

C.S. Lewis saw Sehnsucht as a key to understanding joy. For him, joy “must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” It’s not the image of joy we often imagine. We usually picture joy as bright, cheerful, all smiles. That’s a snapshot of joy, but not its fullness. In truth, we often feel our longing for joy more than joy itself. And when joy does arrive, it doesn’t fully satisfy our desire. Instead, it stirs it, even amplifies it. Joy reveals our longing for something more—a homeward yearning for the place where perpetual joy resides. As Lewis once wrote, “All joy emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.”

Perhaps the greatest gift of joy is how it points us toward our deeper longings. The book of Ecclesiastes says that God has set eternity in the human heart (3:11). We carry an innate sense of the eternal, something near but lost, something found yet out of reach. It’s an ache for the everlasting, rising in our finite hearts. But it cannot be satisfied by anything less than the Infinite.

Even moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, a self-professed atheist, found through his research that “the human mind simply does perceive divinity and sacredness, whether or not God exists.” This led him to reconsider his view on religion, realizing eternity is undeniably imprinted on our hearts. As a result, he lost his “smug contempt for religion.” Eternity is undeniably in our hearts. We must decide if it’s only a delusion to cope with reality—or a hint to find it