Our Restless Heart.

Unspoken Sermons

by George Macdonald

If I find my consciousness to be that of one in some sort of prison;
If I find that I can neither rule the world in which I live nor my own thoughts or desires;
That I cannot quiet my passions, order my likings, determine my ends, will my growth, forget when I want to, or recall what I forget;
That I cannot love when I would, or hate where I would;
That I am no king over myself;
That I cannot supply my own needs, do not even always know which of my seeming needs are to be supplied and which should be treated as impostors;

If, in a word, my own being is in every way too much for me;
If I can neither understand it, be satisfied with it, nor better it;
May it not well give me pause - the pause that ends with prayer?

When my own scale seems too large to manage;
When I reflect I cannot account for my existence, have had no poor hand in it, neither, should I not like it, can do anything towards causing it to cease;
When I think that I can do nothing to make up to those I love, any more than to those I hate, for evils I have done them and sorrows I have caused them;

That in my worst moments I disbelieve in my best, in my best I loathe my worst;
That there is in me no wholeness, no unity;
That life is not a good to me, for I scorn myself;
When I think all or any of these things, can it be strange if I think also that surely there ought to be somewhere a being to account for me, one to account for himself, and make the round of my existence just;

One whose very being accounts and is necessary to account for mine;
Whose presence in my being is imperative, not merely to supplement it, but to make to myself my existence a good thing?

To know God is present, to have consciousness of God where he is the essential life, must be absolutely necessary to that life!
He that is made in the image of God must know him or be desolate; the child must have the Father!

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” 
― Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Saint Augustine