I have desired ...  I will seek. Amid the things that are seen, desire and quest are nearly always linked closely together.  The man who desires money seeks after money.  The desire of the world is often disappointed, but it is rarely supine.  It is dynamic.  It leads men.  True, it leads them astray; but that is a reflection on its wisdom and not on its effectiveness.  Among what we rightly call the lower things men do not play with their desires, they obey them.  But amid the unseen realities of life it is often quite otherwise.  In the religious life desire is sometimes strangely ineffective.  It is static, if that be not a contradiction in terms.  In many a life-story it stands written:  One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I dream of, that will I hope for, that will I wait for.  Many things help to explain this attitude, and, explaining it, they condemn it also.  We allow our surroundings to pass judgement on our longings.  We bring the eternal to the bar of the hour, and postpone the verdict.  Or it may be in the worldliness of our hearts we admit the false plea of urgency and the false claim of authority made by our outward life.  And perhaps more commonly the soul lacks the courage of its desires.  It costs little to follow a desire that goes but a little way, and that on the level of familiar effort and within sight of familiar things.  It is another thing to hear the call of the mountains and to feel the fascination of some far and glittering peak.  That is a call to perilous and painful effort.  And yet again, high desire sometimes leaves life where it found it because the heart attaches an intrinsic value to vision.  It is something to have seen the Alpine heights of possibility.  Yes, it is something, but what is it?  It is a golden hour to the man who sets out to the climb; it is an hour of shame and judgement, hereafter to be manifest, to the man who clings to the comforts of the valley.

One thing have I desired. When a man speaks thus unto us, we have a right to ponder his words with care.  We naturally become profoundly interested, expectant, and, to the limit of our powers, critical.  If a man has seen one thing that he can call simply and finally the desire of his heart, it ought to be worth looking at.  We expect something large, lofty, inclusive.  And we find this:  ’That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.’ Let us examine this desire, And, first of all, we must free our minds from mere literalism.  If we do not, we shall find in this desire many things that are not in it, and miss everything that is in it.  This is not the longing for a cloistered life, the confession of one who is weary of this heavy world, doubtful of its promises and afraid of its powers.  ‘The house of the Lord’ is not a place, but a state, not an edifice, but an attitude.  It is a fair and unseen dwelling-place builded by the hands of God