Lust

(A very dated reflection - evidently so - but hopefully still apt. It's probably no coincidence that it was written right about this time of the month last year, because somehow, during this season of Lent, I thought it would be appropriate to share. :-) )

I have a new phone. It’s nothing special, just a 7650. Oh wait, what am I saying, it IS special. I wouldn’t be writing about it otherwise!

See, it’s the phone I’ve always wanted. It took me a while before I finally could call one of those babies my own, but it was well worth it…I love this phone and all the stuff it can do and how it looks with all its pretty colors. But most of all, I love how it became mine.

I first saw a 7650 up close when Ney tried to take my picture with his brand new one sometime in January of last year (funny how I even remember the time – 9:30 a.m. – and place – Starbucks at the Mega Strip). At the time I didn’t need a new phone: my 8310 was still serving me well. But I was immediately “in crush.” Later that year, when I really, really wanted one of those hi-tech PDA-camera-phones and was ready to retire my old faithful Nokia, I impulsively got myself an Amazing Phone upon the expert advice of tekkie friends. Thinking back on it, I actually settled…on something I had imagined to be “better,” but wasn’t really – not in my book anyway. No matter how amazing it was, and how many more features it had, it just wasn’t a 7650. So my poor new smartphone suffered the fate of most things that are the object of immediate gratification – I promptly lost interest and left it to gather dust at home. Until it found a new home with my friend Tiboy, who only last week rather jokingly suggested that I trade my AP for his - you guessed it - 7650. You can imagine how happy the two of us came out of that bargain! Oh yeah, and Tiboy and his good-as-new AP are thrilled too. Heh heh…

But seriously. Good old Oswald Chambers once spoke about a familiar evil, and not just in its traditional connotation: “Dejection stems from one of two sources – I have either satisfied a lust or have not had it satisfied. Lust means ‘I must have it at once.’ Spiritual lust causes me to demand an answer from God, instead of seeking God Himself who gives the answer. What have I been hoping or trusting God would do? Is today ‘the third day’ and He has still not done what I expected? Am I therefore justified in being dejected and in blaming God?”

I think that the reason why lust is so dangerous - and ultimately disastrous – is because it is all about getting what WE want, without a minute’s consideration of what God wants for us. Or perhaps in selfish disregard of it. Even the most innocent of desires can be horribly destructive if we attempt to pursue them without submitting them to Him. And even when we do, we get impatient and act upon them anyway when He does not immediately gratify, no matter how desperately we want (or think we want) something. If my little phone experience is any indication of what happens when we act upon our wants on our own, whether or not we satisfy them, the result is that we are eventually left frustrated and unfulfilled – especially when we’ve allowed ourselves to “settle” for less what He had actually planned. Only when it is in consonance with what He wants, and in His own masterful timing, does the fulfillment of our dearest desire perfectly come to pass – indeed, I believe that sometimes we are made to patiently wait in order for us to determine whether we genuinely desire something, or whether the “want” is fleeting and will fade over time.

For He knows the deepest desires of our hearts even before we do; in making Him our joy will He give them to us (Psalm 37:4). Through the years He has been faithful with this, in my life: weeding out the temporal desires and heightening – while eventually fulfilling - the genuine: from the big desires to the littler ones like His gift to me of the phone I “crushed” on. And now that He is my joy, my one desire is that all my will and my wants coincide with His, so that I never “settle” for anything less!

“I rely, my whole being relies, Yahweh, on your promise. My whole being hopes in the Lord, more than watchmen for daybreak; more than watchmen for daybreak let Israel hope in Yahweh.” (Psalm 130:5-7)

23 February 2004