Longing

“She’s got a way about her…” Billy Joel’s smooth voice floated through the car. (Click here for a video)  I was with a girlfriend and we were headed to work.  I spoke my thoughts, “Wouldn't it be something to have a man say that about you?”

There are other songs that floated through my head as I thought about that – the Beatles' classic, “Something,” (click here to listen and view the lyrics) and James Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves.” (here's a recent performance of this song) Men singing longingly, describing some ethereal quality about a woman that makes them whole, completes them. I want that quality, and though I know it’s unhealthy (and somewhat creepy) for someone to say they can’t live without you, I want a man to yearn for me like that.

There are things about Hollywood’s version of love that set us up for disappointment.  The image of finding your soul mate, completing each other’s sentences and walking off into the sunset is missing the reality of the little irritations that go along with sharing a life together, much less the gaping wounds that two people can inflict on one another.

And yet, I don’t think Hollywood was the original author of this image of perfect love.  It began in the Garden of Eden, when God say that it wasn't good for man to be alone, and he made a helper that was "just right for him"(Gen. 2:18b, NLT).   When Adam saw his specially created just right for him bride, he exclaimed, 

“At last! This one is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!  She will be called woman, because she was taken from man” (Gen. 2:23, NLT).

This must be the model from which the on-line dating services try so hard to imitate…the original definition of “Soul Mate.”

So, we have the template, we have the ideal in our heads, and we yearn for it, write songs about it, and when something goes wrong in a relationship we thought was so right, we lament, “I guess s/he wasn't THE ONE.”

We know the reason.  The Garden of Eden is no more, as dirty thing called SIN entered the picture, and thus we have need for a Savior. 

But we don’t like to admit our need.  In our American glorification of independence and autonomy, we like to think we can make it alone. There are songs about that too.  Think Simon and Garfunkel, “I am a Rock, I am an Island.”   After being hurt, we shore up our defenses and declare ourselves sufficient unto ourselves.

Now what does God think of this?  My question for the week was “What do you imagine is the expression on God’s face when He looks at you?” I like to think that He looks at me with loving longing, yearning for me to come to Him for completion.

Because He is the one who completes me.  He has no desperate need for me, just love. And though he provided me with one who is “just right for me,” He is the one who mends those riffs between man and woman, filling in the empty spaces left when the puzzle pieces of two lives don’t exactly fit.

And so I look to Him.