My life, I realize, is marked by grasping for one thing after another. Reaching for things I want. Trying to hold onto what I have. And a great deal of that ends in futility. I cannot have so many things. I cannot hold onto them, reach far enough to possess them, or work hard enough to keep them from ever going away.

I keep trying to grasp at my youth, but it keeps walking away from me, one day at a time. Even my beloved Scriptures give me no comfort there, assuring me that my body will gradually waste away.

I wanted to hold my children close forever, but they went off in search of their own lives. As they should. I hoped they would at least be just a short distance away, but their hearts took them far. It’s cards, phone calls and text messages, for which I am grateful; yet last week when I longed to have one of my children just show up at my door and hang out, couldn’t have that.

I have lost others in my life that I very much wanted to keep. A father and mother, now gone to heaven. Friends, too, whom I miss dearly, and couldn’t convince the Lord to let me have here a little longer.

I wanted to hold onto a man I loved who didn’t love me back. A friend who decided I wasn’t worth their time anymore. A fellow Christian who walked away from God, and so walked away from me. I wanted a much better life for people I counseled, but since I couldn’t control their choices, I had to watch them keep striding towards their own downfall.

I long to travel to foreign and wonderful lands, and see for myself so much more of God’s wonderful creation. I can’t seem to reach past my finances and won’t reach past the people who need me right here, to go after that.

Several times I was sure I had the right lottery numbers, so I could be instantly rich, and give financial joy to people I loved and whatever impoverished soul crossed my path and stirred all compassion. I never got a hold of that.

As a girl, I wanted to be a dancer, but that stayed out of reach. As a grown woman, I’ve wished I was raised on a farm, to love and ride horses, to know a persnickety goat, to walk rows of rich garden soil growing delightful food, and with an orchard to gather fall fruits and nuts from. My rural-loving soul awakened too late for that to be within reach, I guess, for my own choices had taken me other places.

The longer I live, the more the numbers add up, of things and people and experiences I long for, and cannot have.

Which, by contrast, makes me all the more thrilled that there is one thing I can seek, and always have. One person I can reach for, who will always love me, always be near, always satisfy my heart as if I had every other thing and person I ever reached for: Jesus Christ.

My Jesus, who said, to those who follow Him:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV)

Your Jesus, through whom comes also the Father, and the Spirit, and all things.

Every time I seek, I find Him. Every time I knock, the door opens. Whenever I take my hungry heart to Him, it is filled until the hunger is replaced with goodness, peace and joy.

But wait! Apparently, you and I are not the only ones in this equation seeking something or someone, not the only one waiting on the longing side of a door, hoping it will be opened to what is really desired:

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

Revelation 3:20 (NIV)