Chaplain's Corner

WANT. I want… “Want” is an interesting four letter word. There are few that would want to call it a “bad” four letter word, but it is a four letter word that bears reflection. Over the Christmas holidays I was lying awake in bed one night, not quite ready to drift off to sleep and I began to think about this business of “wanting”. Of course Christmas is quite the “wanting” time of year. People ask each other, “What do you want for Christmas?”

There is even a new website called Wantster. In their on line add they say, “Everything you want in one place. Create lists of the things you want and follow others to see what they want for any gift giving occasion. Don’t waste time stressing over gift purchases anymore. Wantster allows you to see what people want and what “wants” are trending as the most popular items today.” There you go, an app for your phone that allows you to keep a current “I want” list so that when people are thinking of blessing you with a gift they know exactly what you want.

But this business of wanting is a bit more insidious. Our wants comprise the things we believe will satisfy the longings of our spirit. Oh, we may not have thought of it in those terms before, but think about it. When I “want” something, it is because I believe that something has the power to satisfy one of my longings. Some of those longings are physical, food for instance. But the vast majority of the wants of those who live in an affluent society like ours are wants that we believe if met will satisfy one of the basic longings of our spirituality.

In my work the word want is used often. I hear phrases like: “I want to feel better soon.” “I want to die.” “I want to get out of the hospital.” I also hear about the things people do not want, which is simply another way of expressing a want. “I don’t want to ever have surgery again.” I don’t want to take that medication, it makes me feel funny inside.” “I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry coming into my room and taking a look at me and my problem.”

In the English language the word “want” is used as both a verb and a noun. It expresses both a desire to possess or do something; as well as lack of something desirable. As a noun it has the same connotations in an objective sense instead of in an active sense. It would be pretty hard to get through a day without using the word. It is part of the human condition to “want something” or “be in want” of something. Wanting is so basic to our existence that it is part of every human transaction and decision.

Even if we do not say the word, mentally that word is activated all the time. I got up this morning, looked into the pantry as I considered breakfast and I wanted Shredded Wheat as opposed to Bran Flakes of Rice Krispies. I got dressed and I wanted to wear my brown slacks as opposed to my black slacks. Most of our “want” decisions are made quite unconsciously. If someone stopped me and asked, “Why did you choose your brown slacks over your black slacks?” I would have a tough time answering.

Well, back to my late night pondering about “wanting”. As I thought about “wanting” I began to think of the first phrase of perhaps the most popular portion of the Christian Scriptures, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” “I shall not want…” “I shall not want…” over and over I thought about this phrase, “I shall not want…” Then I began to explore what this means. If the Lord is my Shepherd, all the wants of my life, from the simplest to the most complex are satisfied in Him. He is what my spirit longs for, if I have Him, then I can truly want nothing more. This is quite the statement. But it isn’t just a foolish sentimentality, I believe this is true. When Jesus is given his rightful place in our lives, all the wanting ceases, all the longings of the soul are satisfied, we can echo the words of the Apostle Paul who said that he had learned the secret of contentment, because he had learned that everything is possible as we embrace Jesus as the provider of our every longing.

Will Thompson, a British song writer who died in 1904 wrote a hymn that many of us have sung. The Hymn was titled “Jesus is All the World to Me” and begins with these words, “Jesus is all the world to me, my life, my joy, my all”; these words echo the truth of that first phrase of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want…” I’ll be honest, as I laid their in bed and pondered this phrase; I realized that I wasn’t even close to being there yet. I want to be there, I aspire to get to the place in life that I can say, “the Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want…” but right now, I still have so many wants and I look in so many other places to have them met than to the Lord.

Sometimes this discourages me. But then I forget that this whole business of living in relationship with God is just that, a relationship. As with all relationships we enter them with high aspirations,  but we so often struggle to ever realize all that we wanted in that relationship. This is true of friendships, it is true of marriages, it is true of every relationship including the relationship we enter with God when we place our faith in Jesus.

Falling short of our aspirations is OK, it is reality, it is what is as we live in any relationship. We should never stop aspiring, but we shouldn’t allow falling short to discourage us or worse yet, to abandon trying at all. What a wonderful aspiration to get to the point in life where we are free of wanting, free of that push to do more and to possess more. Free to live with the kind of contentment that allows us to say, “I shall not want”. I think this is part of what we will experience in heaven. I really doubt that we will be driven by “wanting” in heaven – because we will finally be free to find in Jesus all that we could ever want.

Most people start a new year with a list of things they want to accomplish or things they want to get. Whether we call them resolutions or goals or objectives, whether we write them down or just have the list in our heads, those wants are there and the changing of the year seems to be an automatic reset for us to try, try again to reach those goals. I still haven’t the slightest idea of all that “I shall not want” implies. But as I lay there in bed that cold December evening and thought about “not wanting” it held an appeal that will have me pondering this for some time to come. Try to imagine, if you have the courage, what your life would be like without the drive of wanting, the drive to possess more and more, to do more and more, to experience more and more and to realize that after getting and doing and experiencing there is still more wanting, an insatiable wanting that can only be met when we finally know the meanings of that familiar phrase, “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”