Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade. Marcel Proust

Proverbs 19:22 -What a man desires is unfailing love; better to be poor than a liar.

Proust describes well the condition of a soul having not yet tasted of the unfailing love of God, in Christ Jesus. For in a world that promotes “personal” desire and the pursuit of it’s fulfillment as ones greatest call, the shipwrecked hearts of humanity line up in the wake of fulfilled desire, only seemingly attained, but then to be found left wanting once again.

We can all relate to Proust’s sentiment. Just simply look to your own desire for anything you have ever dreamed of having. Although for a time, once receiving the object of ones desire, we experience a sense of temporal satisfaction, most often those feelings are short lived and we are on to the next thing that we think will produce the same feeling, but potentially and hopefully, next time it will last longer. It only takes a handful of these experiences of receiving and then “groaning” (Romans 8:23) again for more, to teach our subconscious that possession (commitment) is not what we are really after, and attaches the chief value to the desire or “feeling” of wanting, not the actual reception of the desired thing; This is why most people love the “chase” of a relationship but get bored with it as soon as possession (commitment) is involved.

The problem with this thinking and consequent living is twofold. The first problem that arises is in value being attached to the desire, not the possession. This attachment insulates us from the opportunity to experience what it is we were made for, namely unfailing love. It also serves to place the focus of ones energy on the temporal nature of feelings, which can be swayed easily by something as simple as lack of sleep, and moves one away from the commitment that is had in possession, which in turn, can by grace lead to a deeper and fuller understanding of loves very nature. This inevitably continues to perpetuate a “what I want is still out there” mentality, that when attached to our desire, keeps us from experiencing a more mature love, that finds its inception in desire, but its fulfillment in sacrifice (commitment).

Secondly, it misunderstands the actual nature of our desire itself and forces us to address this question; are all my desires for various objects as real and independent of one another as they seem, or are all my desires simply a humanistic grasping at fulfilling something placed deep within me, that needs to be received and not attained? That is to say that when we experience in fullness the love and glory of Christ, the only thing that will fade, is everything else we thought we wanted instead.

C.S. Lewis would describe this misunderstanding of our desire in these terms. "We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

The shift occurs for us though the understanding that since the fall of man, we have lived under the “desire curse” of original sin, namely God is holding out on you, and what He has provided for you is not what you most deeply want. Eat the apple. Yet what was exposed in that deception and consequently engrained into the fabric of humanity was a pattern of “anxious grasping” for fulfillment, inevitably leaving one to be found still “wanting” even after possession. This condition was the precursor to the entire redemptive movement of God to his people through Christ. It is the redemption of the falsity of our need to possess something that will satisfy, with the truth that only in our being possessed, will our desire be fully quenched.

Deuteronomy 14:2 -for you are a people holy to the LORD your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the LORD has chosen you to be his treasured possession.

Revelation 5:9-they sang a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.

We are the Lords desired possession. He purchased us by his blood, his sacrifice. It was not because we were in and of our selves something to be desired, quite to the contrary. We were helpless, sheep with out a shepherd (Matthew 9:36), even enemies of God (Romans 5:10). Yet his mind has been set on purchasing us since the foundation of the world and his unchanging and unfailing love is the force behind such action. Our souls and bodies long for an encounter with such eternal and unfading love. Anything short of this, is a temporal fix, that serves as a distraction, keeping our attentions nailed to incapable “phantom” loves than never quite do it.

“What a man desires is unfailing love, better to be poor than a liar.” What the writer of proverbs is saying is that it is better to have none of the things that you think you desire (to be poor), than to lie to yourself about what you truly want (unfailing love). For it is only in the experience of the eternal, unchanging and unfading love of God for us in Christ Jesus that in possession the object of our desire (Christ himself) does not fade, but daily thereafter grows increasingly by grace until one day, when our bodies and souls are fully redeemed, we will experience in full, what now we fully have (justification), but only experience in part (we are partially sanctified, and still await glorification– Romans 8).