Restless: Unable to rest or relax as a result of anxiety or boredom.
Anxious: Feeling worry, unease or nervousness.
I’m restless, you’re restless, and I’ll bet most people we know feel anxious. Often. Some say this is due to the pandemic – it left us with lingering uncertainty about life. Others say staring at screens too much makes us wired – edgy – unsatisfied.
Most of us, I think, have secret thoughts about life. We have an unwritten list of things that dissatisfy us. If we could swap out our home, city, friends, spouses or jobs, life would look how it should. Maybe, for you, it’s a bucket list, not a grumpy list; if you could visit these places and do these things, those negative feelings would fade in the wake of excitement and discovery.
This weekend a priest shared a thought that I think can help us. If we knew, believed and remembered this from day to day, I think our lives would be better.
“Jesus has gone to his father… and he wants to bring you there as well. To see the father. That’s the goal of your life: to see and to know and to adore the father. That’s what you were made for. And until you know this, your life will be confusing. You will think that the goal of your life is to get a good education in order to get a good job in order to make good money in order to attract a good partner in order to have a good family and so on.”
“It’s possible to check every one of those boxes and never see the father, because you’re walking in a way other than the way Jesus has laid out for you and if you do that, your heart and your soul will be absolutely restless.”
He went on to ask if we can say, with Philip, ‘Lord, show me the father, and I will be satisfied.’ (John 14:8)
Is that your mantra? Show me the father and I will be satisfied? Or have you forgotten that falling in love with our maker is what satisfies the soul?
The priest asks if we want to qualify that statement – show me the father AND… job security, health… No. Show me the father. Period.
It is God alone that fully and finally satisfies.
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
– St Augustine
Listen to Fr Jonathan Turtle’s sermon from Sunday, May 7th (10:30 AM) here.
