LOOKING BEYOND OURSELVES

Our lives form some sort of pattern whether or not we consciously arrange it. I have friends whose lives center on material possessions.  They scour the stock market pages each day, maintain houses in several countries, and buy new luxury cars every year.  I have other friends who work at minimum-wage jobs in deliberate rebellion against parents who pressed them relentlessly to achieve.  I have friends who boast about their seventy-to-eighty hour workweeks, and others who boast about sleeping till noon each day.  Some women I know spend several hours each day keeping fit and making themselves beautiful; others have greasy hair, wear no make-up, and disdain standards of beauty.  I know a wine connoisseur who stores ten thousand bottles of vintage wine in humidity-controlled coolers; I know an alcoholic who can't keep a single unopened bottle in his house.  One neighbor practices two hours every day, using a homemade lectern and reaction-monitoring device, toward his goal of becoming a contestant on the TV show Jeopardy.  A girl down the street lives for weekend rave parties at nightclubs.

These life patterns grow out of natural desires and longings.  Our bodies desire food, drink, stimulation, pleasure, sex.  At another level, we also long for beauty, love, security, worth, meaning, belonging.  Everyone has such longings, and how we respond to them depends largely on what we believe about why we’re here.

If I see myself as one more species of animal, with no life beyond this one and no accountability to a Higher Power, then why not follow the pleasure instinct to the end?  On the other hand, if I see this planet as God's world, and my longings as rumors of another world, then I want to connect those clues to God's overall plan.  I want to bring the two worlds together, and I do so by accepting that we human beings must look beyond ourselves -- above ourselves -- for direction in ordering our desires.

-- Philip Yancey in Rumors of Another World

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