Day 1 of 14
The Restless Heart
Our Hearts Are Restless Until They Rest in You
Scripture Readings
Today's Reading
Read Psalm 42:1-2: "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God."
Then read Romans 1:20-23, where Paul describes humanity's tendency to exchange the truth about God for created things.
Augustine's Insight
The Confessions opens with perhaps the most famous prayer in Christian literature:
"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."
In a single sentence, Augustine captures the human condition. We are made for God — designed with a capacity and a craving that nothing else can satisfy. Every restless desire — for love, meaning, beauty, belonging — is ultimately a desire for the One who made us.
But Augustine learned this the hard way. Before finding rest in God, he pursued rest everywhere else: in sexual relationships, in intellectual prestige, in the thrill of the theatre, in Manichean philosophy. Each satisfaction was real but temporary. Each left him hungrier than before.
"I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love, and from the very depth of my need hated myself for not more keenly feeling the need."
Reflection
Augustine is describing something every human knows: the experience of wanting something without being able to name it. We feel the restlessness but misidentify the cure. We reach for what is close at hand — relationships, achievement, pleasure — and wonder why the satisfaction fades.
The psalm captures the same truth in an image: a deer, desperate for water, panting at a dry streambed. The deer doesn't need anything — it needs water. Similarly, the soul doesn't need anything — it needs God.
Going Deeper
Paul's argument in Romans 1 provides the theological framework: God has made Himself evident through creation, but humanity "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images." We are, in Augustine's terms, lovers who have loved the wrong things — not because the things are bad, but because we have asked them to be God.
Today, simply sit with the question: What am I restless about? What do I keep reaching for? And could that restlessness be — as Augustine discovered — an invitation rather than a problem?
Key Quotes
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
“I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love, and from the very depth of my need hated myself for not more keenly feeling the need.”
Prayer Focus
Acknowledging your deepest longings and directing them toward God
Meditation
Where do you notice restlessness in your life? What are you truly seeking beneath the surface desires?
Question for Discussion
If every restless desire is ultimately a desire for God, does that mean the things we chase — relationships, success, pleasure — are distractions to be eliminated, or signposts to be followed? How do we tell the difference?