As C.S. Lewis famously said in The Weight of Glory , “We are far too easily pleased.” For all my love of sports, and I’ve spent countless hours since childhood watching men and women strike or throw a ball, tumble across the floor and swing up into the air, run around in circles trying to achieve world records, I think one of the devil’s schemes is to use the good gift of sports to derail our affections, to convince us that the joy and excitement we feel over our team winning, or this person achieving a world record, is the pinnacle of joy and delight.

No. We were made for so much more. We were made to be swallowed up in the enjoyment and praise of our Creator and Savior. But even when we realize the truth of this, and begin to experience a tiny sliver of it here on earth, we can become disappointed because we see how great a chasm there still is between what we experience of Christ’s love and the infinite riches that await. We’ve been given a sip of the glory but our eyes have become opened to the vastness and depth of the great sea of his love. How can we ever reach it? Yes, we were made for so much more, and he is deserving of more than we could ever give him but we are just lumps of clay! This is what I think Samuel Rutherford is getting at in the following quote:

Oh, where is He? O Fairest, where dwellest Thou? O never-enough admired Godhead, how can clay win up [attain] to Thee? How can creatures of yesterday be able to enjoy Thee? Oh, what pain is it, that time and sin should be so many thousand miles betwixt a loved and longed-for Lord and a dwining [pining away] and love-sick soul, who would rather than all the world have lodging with Christ! Oh, let this bit of love of ours, this inch and half-span length of heavenly longing, meet with Thy infinite love! Oh, if the little I have were swallowed up with the infiniteness of that excellency which is in Christ! Oh that we little ones were in at the greatest Lord Jesus! Our wants should soon be swallowed up with His fulness.

Have we settled for stale enjoyments? Have we allowed our God-given capacity for enjoyment and worship and praise to terminate on things that can only be truly and fully satisfied by an infinite Love? This morning I feel my utter lack, the inability to enjoy God and give to him what he deserves. My attention wanders and drifts, settling for lesser loves. The Lord sees and knows this. I thank God for brothers and sisters like Samuel Rutherford who also recognized their own lack. And praise him for his mercy, that he is a compassionate Father who does not condemn us for our lack but continues to call out to his children and say,

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Isaiah 55:1-2