troubadours of a nobler romance

To be troubadours of a nobler romance—should we have any other directive as followers of Jesus? I don't think so. If we do follow him—Jesus, that is—then we should share his idea of the first commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. [Matthew 22:37] Basically, to be lovesick above all else. To be lovesick above being righteous, to be lovesick above being pure, to be lovesick above being just...that is our calling.

That's not to say that we won't wind up being advocates of social justice, that we won't have a pull on our hearts to help those down and out, that we won't desire to be pure and righteous in thought, word, and deed. But those things will be overflow if we are simply in-love with the person of Jesus. You know how when you're in love with someone, a human, you tend to do kind things in general? Not even directed at that person necessarily, but you may start waving kindly at drivers who cut you off on the highway, or you may play peek-a-boo with a child in a restaurant, or pay for the coffee of the person behind you in line. You want to be a better person. And this? This is just an ordinary romance. Imagine what you might be capable of with a nobler romance? That's where our righteousness, our purity, our justice flows from...our lovesickness with the person of Jesus.

So why is it so difficult to pursue the heart of Jesus? Why is it easier to pursue the heart of another human being that we find physically attractive? I would venture to say it's because we don't what we're missing. We have absolutely no idea how cool and how beautiful Jesus is. Why? Because he is other. We can't get our minds around him, so we think that he is only as great as we can imagine. It's easier to stay with what we know, because we know what to expect. The questions that we ask the most important people in our lives—those probing, unearthing questions that let us get to know the inner landscape of a person slowly and over time—those are the kinds of questions we should be asking Jesus. We will be blown away by the way he answers us, the way he reveals himself to us. So much so that we will grow to expect more; we will get a taste of who he is and then not be able to stop ourselves from pursuing him more.

C.S. Lewis, in his famous essay The Weight Of Glory, states, "Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted 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."

So the psalmist says, "Make Yahweh your joy, and he will give you your heart's desires." The psalmist is saying, make Yahweh your joy—not the things we are far too easily pleased with—because those things aren't your heart's desire: in fact, Yahweh is your heart's desire. If you make HIM your joy, then your heart is satisfied. He created us, he made our hearts, and he made our heart's desires. We'd do well to trust him. He has promised us so much more—a love-affair with our Creator. How can we help but be troubadours of that romance?