Deep within every human heart there is a yearning for Paradise Lost. We stand outside of the Garden, East of Eden, longing to return. The way back is blocked. The Word of God tells us, “He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24).

Our memories of the past are often colored by that same longing. We look forward to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season with mingled longing and dread, knowing instinctively that we can’t recreate old joys. Too much water has gone under the bridge. Too many years have passed. To be truthful, some of the joys of Christmas Past are more often magnified by memory than actually experienced. Even that wonderful old Dylan Thomas poem admits as much, “One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now. . .”

The Theme of desire unfulfilled is echoed in many works of literature including the very popular Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. J. K. Rowling, whose writing is tinged with romantic nostalgia, is herself distrustful of desire. That is very clear in the tale of the Mirror of Erised [Erised is desirE backwards for all you Muggles]. The Wizard Dumbledore is explaining the limitations of the Mirror of Erised to Harry, and he says, “The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is.”

Rowling is wrong. Would the happiest man on earth have no desires? I hardly think so! Desire contains within itself a deeper delight. Rowling misses the deeper insight of C. S. Lewis who makes it very clear that “though the sense of want is acute and even painful, yet the mere wanting is felt to be somehow a delight” [Pilgrim’s Regress]. The Lord God Himself validates our desires, saying, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4).

The Lord God means what he says. While you can’t go backwards in time to some lost Eden, you can go forward to Paradise Regained. Even in lesser ways, while you can’t recreate old joys, by grace you can create new joys. Start your search to fulfill the desires of your hearts by taking delight in the Lord. In Him the past is forgiven, healed, ransomed, and redeemed.

Rowling has a deep distrust of desire. Dumbledore goes on to tell Harry that the Mirror “shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. . . . Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what is shows is real or even possible. . . . It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.”

Life without desire is ultimately life without hope. Hope and desire are fundamental to the well being of humankind. While it does “not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live” at the same time living without dreams removes the sense of adventure that is at the heart of every worthwhile human endeavor. Dream on! But delight yourself in the Lord, that your very dreaming may be sanctified by His Presence and His Guiding Love. We are right to dream dreams. Dreams have always moved us into the future.

We cannot return through the gate East of Eden. That way is blocked, but “we have a new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh [Heb. 10:19]. That way leads directly into the presence of God the Father from whom comes “every good and perfect gift” [James 1:17]. There all true desire will be satisfied, not only in the future, but when it’s safe for us, even in the present. ~

- Father Rob +

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