Four Hundred Texts on Love 12

43.  If a man desires something, he makes every effort to attain it. But of all things which are good and desirable the divine is incomparably the best and the most desirable. How assiduous, then, we should be in order to attain what is of its very nature good and desirable.

As something of a competitive overachiever, I like this text. It reveals a simple, yet often overlooked truth.We can reliably gauge how much we want something by how much effort we are willing to expend to gain it. This, of course, is one of the threads behind Jesus’ statement that a man cannot serve two masters.

By this measure, I can ask myself if I want God. And far too often, it seems that my answer is no, or at least not very much. I want to want God. The Christian story has captured my heart and imagination. But I expend tremendous effort in many other areas of life and often have comparatively little left for God.

However, I do have faith that as I keep doing the little things that I can do somewhat consistently, God will take those and build upon them. God gives me grace, which is to say that God gives me himself, so that I might want him more. If I did not believe that, then I suppose I would see this whole Christian thing as fundamentally hopeless.