Greatest Want of All

 What, in this very moment is your greatest Want? 

Success? a house? Beauty?

Athletic body? freedom? health? wealth? fame?

world peace? a good meal?...the list of wants is endless...

Last week I mentioned my Grandmother who was a storehouse of quotes, proverbs and wisdom. I remember her repeating this one from the Bible when we wished for things...

 But godliness with contentment is great gain.

1 Tim.6:6

We want, oh. how we often want what lies beyond our reach

And yet the Want of it stirs us toward what waits to be

Then oft in the soft rush of years, while tears and laughter teach

We learn to Want with wiser wish and lesser fantasy

The Wants of daily strife are part of human life, it seems

Some hound the groping hand while others spur the heart to hope

This world is a buffet of great temptation and daydreams

As what we feed the mind becomes the means whereby we cope

Want, when honed by a Higher Call can lead to achievement

But oft by foolish Want we stray and oft by it we fall

Oh, pray that in its crash-course of full-force relinquishment

Heaven becomes our heart’s desire and greatest Want of all

© Janet Martin

Some C.S.Lewis quotes addressing our Wants...

 “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.”
― C.S. Lewis

 “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

 “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. ”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

 “Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
—C.S. Lewis