Imagine, for one week, having to do everything you desire to do. What good things in your life would be damaged or destroyed by the end of the week? What relationships would be left intact?
It'd be cool to be able to honestly say, "my week went on exactly as normal," but most of us can't say that. Most of us desire things we know would be harmful for ourselves or others, so we choose not to act on some of our desires.
If we allow our desire to be our lord. our master, then our lives won't go well, because our desires are unmerciful and fickle. Some of out desires are never sated and care nothing about the long term good of anyone or anything, and others of our desires shift over time. Very few, if any, of our desires are stable across our whole life. And yet many of us allow desire to dictate who we can be in community with, what our politics should be, ever who we are, the very nature of our essential self-identity. When allow desire to dictate our lives in that way, it's impossible to find stable flourishing over time, to find joy and love and wholeness.
Our desires are not are rightful masters, but neither are they our servants. We cannot in a single act of the will shape our desires as we see fit. They do not obey us.
Our desires are our gardens. Our desire is a bonsai tree, to be shaped, though never fully controlled, by our careful pruning, intelligent forethought, and the flexible strength of our will. They respond to our thoughts, to our habits, even to our willful correction, not as a slave responds to a master, but as a tree responds to dirt and light and water, and to the pruners careful cultivation. No one can have the abundant life of Jesus Christ without the cultivation of their desires.
It'd be cool to be able to honestly say, "my week went on exactly as normal," but most of us can't say that. Most of us desire things we know would be harmful for ourselves or others, so we choose not to act on some of our desires.
If we allow our desire to be our lord. our master, then our lives won't go well, because our desires are unmerciful and fickle. Some of out desires are never sated and care nothing about the long term good of anyone or anything, and others of our desires shift over time. Very few, if any, of our desires are stable across our whole life. And yet many of us allow desire to dictate who we can be in community with, what our politics should be, ever who we are, the very nature of our essential self-identity. When allow desire to dictate our lives in that way, it's impossible to find stable flourishing over time, to find joy and love and wholeness.
Our desires are not are rightful masters, but neither are they our servants. We cannot in a single act of the will shape our desires as we see fit. They do not obey us.
Our desires are our gardens. Our desire is a bonsai tree, to be shaped, though never fully controlled, by our careful pruning, intelligent forethought, and the flexible strength of our will. They respond to our thoughts, to our habits, even to our willful correction, not as a slave responds to a master, but as a tree responds to dirt and light and water, and to the pruners careful cultivation. No one can have the abundant life of Jesus Christ without the cultivation of their desires.