My three-year-old granddaughter asked my wife to draw her a triangle, which she did. But there was something wrong with it. So my granddaughter asked again. Again it was drawn for her and with rising frustration she said, “No, a triangle!” So my wife tried the letter A. That wasn’t it. She tried a rectangle. That wasn’t it. She tried a circle. That wasn’t it. By this time the little girl was in tears. “No, A Triangle!!” We never did figure it out.
It has to be so frustrating to lack the necessary vocabulary to communicate.
Existentialist would call it angst, especially, when it happens to us as adults. Our hearts are full of pent-up frustration. We want so much to be happy. We want to share an abundant life with another. We want to satisfy a nagging hunger that there is something more in life that we do not yet have. This has nothing to do with material things it is a soul hunger crying out for oneness with something bigger than we. The Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch, tried to paint it is his famous picture “The Scream.”
Paul must have known this angst. In Romans 8 he wrote, “We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”
God knows what we need to quench the cry of the hungry human heart.
Written by Roger Bothwell on October 23, 2003.
Spring of Life, 901 Signorelli Circle, St. Helena, CA 94574