Restless Hearts

Restless Hearts

Familiarity breeds contempt.  I imagine all of us have experienced the reality of this adage at some point in our lives.  Certainly, I realize it when foods that I once found indescribably delicious become, after repeated and repeated tastings, tiresome and bland.

Sociologists have done studies showing its power to affect our attitudes towards each other.  A hypothetical person was described to a test group using generic descriptors and the participants were to say whether they would like this person or not.  The participants heard either two, four, six, eight, or ten descriptors.  The result was that the more descriptors that the participant heard – a surrogate for the more familiar they were with the person – the less likely they were to say that they would like that person.

Why would this be so?  The researchers speculated that the more we know of a person, the more likely we’ll know something we don’t like about them.  Jesus has this problem when he returned to Nazareth after building a reputation around Galilee as a charismatic teacher and prophetic healer.  Those who knew him as just another dusty child playing in the streets, the son of a carpenter, certainly nobody of reputation or esteem, rejected him as someone worthy of their respect.   They were so repulsed by his claims that they tried to kill him.  Familiarity certainly bred contempt.

St. Augustine knew this well.  At the start of his autobiography, he states, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." 

His premise is the key.  We believe that God did not create us by accident but out of great love, for he created us in his own image and likeness.  We believe that God did not create us without meaning, but with a purpose, a destiny to be one with Him in love, to be one with Him in eternity.  We believe that God did not create us to be abandoned, but to be forever with Him, who knew us before we were born, who formed us in our mother’s womb, who promises to be with us until the end of time.

Thus, whether we are conscious of it or not, we are constantly seeking perfection.   We seek the perfect, but we ourselves – and all of mortal creation around us – are imperfect.  We complicate matter even further, since our idea of perfection itself becomes imperfect, for it is not objective at all, but simply our own subjective idea of perfection.  If we don’t like it, it’s not perfect.

Yet we still hope that someday, we will meet that person who, for us, will be perfect.  It never happens.  Eventually, we are frustrated when we inevitably discover the imperfection, or perhaps simply that thing we don’t like, that proves we are all human.  We restlessly search and search, becoming more restless, more frustrated, more contemptuous of those, including ourselves, who fail to measure up to  our standard of perfection.

Our search can only end when we find the One who is truly, objectively perfect, the One who made us for Himself, the One who loves us perfectly, with a love that never ends, with a love that never fails.  Only when we rest in God does our heart lie still.  Only when we rest in God, are we at peace.  Only when we rest in God, can we love as He loves us.

And this stillness, this peace, this perfect love, changes everything.

It allows us to love and rejoice in the world, even when it doesn’t always work the way we would like. 

It allows us to love ourselves, accepting our own imperfections and failings, knowing that God’s unfailing love is still ours. 

And most importantly, it allows us to love others, accepting them as fellow sons and daughters of God, fellow objects of God’s perfect, infinite and unconditional love, no matter how unlike they may be from us, no matter how familiar we may be with their limitations and imperfections.

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.