Editorial March 13, 1989 Issue

The desire for holiness

William E. Moody

Desire is a term that seems to have lost some of its more positive meaning in recent years. Today the word is perhaps most often associated with physical or emotional urges—the craving after personal power, prestige, money, sensual gratification.

Yet there's another kind of desire that has a much deeper dimension. It represents the yearning of the human spirit for something more substantial than the fleeting satisfactions materialism or sensualism would offer. When this kind of heartfelt yearning turns in the direction of God, seeking with pure motives a higher purpose in life, it even becomes a prayer.

In Science and Health, the major work on the subject of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy writes of God as the all-knowing, omnipotent intelligence, or divine Mind. And in the first chapter, entitled simply "Prayer," Mrs. Eddy observes: "Thoughts unspoken are not unknown to the divine Mind. Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds."^{Science and Health, p. 1.}