Your Heart's Desire

May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble, (and) grant you your heart’s desire and prosper all your plans. Excerpted from Psalm 20

What is your heart’s desire? What are your plans? Are you expecting the Lord to answer you in the day of trouble?

I am not sure people know what their “heart’s desire” is. There is a lot of wishful thinking, of course. Most of us wish we would win the lottery. Some people wish it so much, in fact; they even go to the trouble of actually buying lottery tickets.

I, on the other hand, want to win the lottery, but refuse to buy lottery tickets as I consider that a form of voluntary taxation – and I don’t pay taxes the law doesn’t require me to pay. So I make my wishes known that I want to win the lottery, but I don’t hold my breath thinking it likely to happen in my lifetime.

While wishing can be kind of a fun exercise, and dreaming of what one would do with all that cash pouring down from heaven (or Sacramento) can have kind of an inebriating effect on the psyche, the fact remains that wishful thinking has no legs; has no muscle; and has no substance. It is a vapor that rises up like a fog, obscures your view for a bit, but then dissipates when things get warm.

While God created us with the capacity to dream and to wish, I believe it is God’s primary intention to know in what direction you have pointed your heart. When you draw up your last will and testament, for instance, you make as clear as possible how you want your estate distributed, and to whom. The courts see your desire, not as a vague wish, but as “direction”. The court’s job is to honor your intentions by interpreting your instructions as accurately as possible.

When we pray, we are invited to be clear, not in order to compel God to honor our requests (after all, God is God, and we are not), but rather so we can bring our hearts and minds into conformity with God’s will. The Lord’s prayer, as we pray it, is for God’s will to be done on earth, as it is in heaven. The assumption of the psalmist is that our heart’s desire and our plans would conform to the will of God for us and for our neighbor. To do that, we have to have some idea of what God is like, and of what God desires for us.

Jesus speaks to that in the Gospel of Mark where he says the kingdom of heaven is as if a person scatters seed and mysteriously it sprouts up and produces grain for the harvest (see Mark 4:26ff). The question I need to ask is this: what are you planting for God’s sake? What kind of seed are you scattering? After all, what you plant is what you get.

So many people reap strife in life because that is what they plant. They sow seeds of negativity and discord and wonder why they find themselves reaping disappointment and failure. That’s not to say that disappointments and failures don’t happen to good or pleasant people. Anyone who has been around the block a time or two knows that athletes can have heart attacks, non-smokers can get cancer, and hard workers can lose their jobs.

The point is not that bad things won’t happen to good people, nor is there a guarantee that bad people won’t prosper and enjoy the benefits of their dog-eat-dog lifestyle. We simply have to trust God that justice will out in the end, and know that all people will surely stand before their maker some day and give account for their stewardship. The Bible tells us: “God will not be mocked”.

But for us, we must hear the good news that what we plant, God will raise up. What have you planted? What are you planting? For that matter, what has God planted in you? After all, the kingdom of God is IN you (says Jesus in another place). God has planted goodness and wholeness and healthy seeds in you. With patience, we wait to see what will spring up from out of the earth, and from out of this, our valley.

What God sees is his heart’s desire; his children; and his kingdom. Amen.

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