I want to live an experiential spirituality. I want to feel the ancient God of the Bible, present within me in the kitchen, in the car, here at Starbucks as I write. But it’s not a feeling that I’m after, actually. It’s a tender, reciprocal relationship. I have some. But I want more. Much more. All too often I brush it aside, push right past, in a busy, distracted life. I want to know the eternal God the way He knows me.

Spoiler alert. I don’t.

But if the pain of the struggle, the boring of the ordinary, the numbness of the ever-present noise… if they’ve brought me to anything in these 52 years on the planet, they’ve brought me to this: I want to know as I am fully known. I need to know. I must.

But why? Why the urgency? I have a pretty good life. It has it’s troubles, to be sure. But I have food and shelter, family and friends. I have safety, meaningful work, human connection. Is there really more? Am I right to pine for something beyond the goodness I already have?

Oh yes. This longing is right. It was hard-wired into me when eternity was set within my heart. Even as I give voice to it, I break through to clarity. I momentarily breathe beyond the matrix, blinking in wide-eyed wonder at a glimpse of the real. I refuse to be pacified by comfort, giving myself instead to sample the sharp tang of desire. I want to know you, God. I want to hear your voice, to walk alongside you when you are at work, to whisper your name like a lover in the dark watches of the night.

You offer the intimacy we all crave, the meaning we all long for. You embody the true belonging our hearts grasp and strive and break for. You show us our place in the larger story, the one that makes sense of all our small stories.You’re the one who created color, wove together DNA, authored the first love story. It’s you, Jesus, the desire of the nations.

I call myself yours, and so I am. In my head, I know it to be fact. But my heart has heard only rumors of this truth, felt only aftershocks of this earth shattering reality.

I want more.

Even now I hear you whispering, “Me too.”