Satisfying the longing heart

Do you long with your soul to feel God’s presence? Do you long to be free of sin, sickness, or fear? Well, you’re not alone, and this week’s Bible Lesson, titled “Soul,” is prepared for you!

The authors of Psalms also expressed great yearning. Section 1 opens with Psalm 84, where the author cries that his “soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord” (verse 2 , citation 1). And Psalms 119:174 says, “I have longed for thy salvation” (cit. 11). How natural it is to yearn to feel close to good, because that is our home, our true nature. It is a desire to know one’s true identity. This Lesson offers some guidance—it shows us that our yearnings are rewarded by finding our identity in Soul, God.

One of the first things we learn is that we are not a creation of matter or material history. Our true identity is not tied to time or space. While we may think we are the sum of a particular mortal history, Mary Baker Eddy writes, “… matter can make no conditions for man” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 120 , cit. 8). Our being is independent of matter.

We might ask, then, “What are we?” We are expressions of Soul, as Mary Baker Eddy explains: “Soul is the substance, Life, and intelligence of man, which is individualized, but not in matter. Soul can never reflect anything inferior to Spirit” (Science and Health, p. 477 , cit. 5). The book of Leviticus declares that we all have an inseparable spiritual connection to our creator. The Priestly Code in Leviticus includes: “Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy” (19:2 , cit. 9). We are the expression of what God is.

Jesus’ healings showed that he was able to see that we are holy. When he encountered a man whose identity appeared to be tied to material conditions (he was deaf and had a speech impediment), he saw the man’s true identity in Soul and said to him, “Ephphatha,” commanding his ears and tongue to “be opened” (see Mark 7:32–37 , cit. 18). Jesus knew that the man’s ability to hear and speak were always intact because they were spiritual, not dependent upon material organs.

It might sometimes feel as though we meet with resistance when trying to see our identity in Soul. But this resistance is nothing more than a false belief of material history or identity trying to look real and important. Christ Jesus helped us to see that any notions based on a “matter story” are to be put out. In the healing of Jairus’ daughter, for example, the girl initially appeared to be dead. When Jesus, rejecting this picture, declared, “she is not dead, but sleepeth,” the people around him laughed. Jesus had to put those convinced of the picture of death out of the room. After he had silenced those voices, the daughter was restored (see Luke 8:41, 42, 49–55 , cit. 21).

This week’s Lesson reminds us that our being is holy and meaningful, like a piece of music or art that feels so sacred because it exists only for the purpose of expressing the beauty of Soul. We, too, are in that place of holiness when we consciously live to express God. That allows us to be a better giver, brings us more satisfaction, and provides us with a response to our yearnings. Isaiah 58:10 explains: “If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day” (cit. 23).