I was skimming through the classic book, Centering Prayer by Basil Pennington and I came across this quote:
"Much of the unhappiness in our world comes from our seeking to find fulfillment and happiness in things that ultimately cannot satisfy us. In fact, only One can truly satisfy us and that is our God...To choose as the ultimate goal of our lives anything less than God will leave us frustrated, unsatsified, despairing of finding any meaning that is worthy of us, anything that can satisfy the limitless hunger of our minds to know, of our hearts to love. If we do not see all the other things we choose in life as in some way opening out to this infinite fullness, they will prove to be dead ends. Not matter how good and beautiful they may be, no matter how much of ourselves we invest in them, there will come a time when we will say, 'Is this all there is?' And life will appear as a cruel joke, a project that can only lead to frustration and misery. It will be something we need to escape from by drugs, liquor, the passing excitment of sex; something we will try to sleep off or let slip away while we sit mindless before the 'boob tube.' For only so long can we chase, breathless, after passing goods before we discover the cruelty of their limits." (p.142)
God doesnt desire that we not enjoy life. Only that we do not substitute the things that we enjoy for the Source of our enjoyment. When we do that, they become idols and we seek to find fulfillment and happiness in them. They become spiritual dead ends. God desires that we do enjoy life, that we do experience happiness and fulfillment. There is nothing self-serving in any of that. But, God also desires that we recognize God as the ultimate Source of all that is good and beautiful and enjoyable.
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