Psalm-light for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost, 2021

Psalm 20

“May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble,
the name of the God of Jacob defend you.
Grant you your heart’s desire
and prosper all your plans.”
(Psalm 20: 1, 4)

I knew a man who assumed that if he desired something, the impulse must arise from selfishness. He was very hard on himself. It is true that our egos can reign as tyrants in our lives, and make us (and people around us) miserable. Elsewhere in the Psalms, (Psalm 78) the writer refers to the Exodus journey when he wrote about the restless dissatisfaction of the Israelites: “they did not stop their craving, though the food was still in their mouths (Psalm 78: 30).” While a critical self-awareness of our motives and desires is important, it is an unduly harsh view of God to assume that He would deny us everything we might want.

God not only wants to give us, as His children, every good thing (Matthew 7: 11), even more, He wants us to realize our heart’s desire. Blessed is the person who knows what their heart’s true desire really is, as opposed to the appetites and demands of the ego. As Anglicans, we offer a prayer at the beginning of the Eucharist, the Collect for Purity. In it, we acknowledge that God knows the desires of our hearts (all of them-- the good and the bad, the wholesome and the harmful), and we pray that God would cleanse our hearts by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, through Christ, our Lord.

We are all yearning for an end to COVID restrictions and lives of greater freedom, as we return to something approaching normal. But not all of the old normal was good, for ourselves and for others. Jesus Christ invites us into a way of freedom, joy and wholeness, not centered in the consumerism of our culture, but in loving God with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength, and in loving our neighbor as ourselves. On the night before Jesus gave his life for the life of the world, he prayed that his joy, the joy of the loving communion of the Trinity, would be in us, and that our joy would be complete (John 15: 11). As St. Augustine put it, “our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O God.” May we find rest and renewal in the heart of God, who is eternal love.

Walking in the light
If you were to sit down with Jesus, and he looked at you with his gaze of love and compassion, and asked you, “Child, what is your heart’s desire?” What would you say?

 Submitted by Archdeacon Peter Crosby