Mistaken Longings

Our pastor said today that the spiritual practice of going to church helps us access the longings that we have for the Transcendent, the Divine, the Eternal. I think that one of the ways the church does this is by helping us realize what the longings in our hearts are. We are like babies who do not know what the signals mean that their bodies are giving them. Even if babies could talk, they still would not know what to tell us. That is why parents put babies on schedules - all the basics get covered without the parents having to correctly discern the haphazard attempts at communicating by the baby. Likewise, we do not recognize the signals from our spirits and mistake the longings that we have as longings for success or spouses or money and don't recognize that the longings are for God. So when church is "done right" it helps us sort out our longings and like salt, increases/magnifies our longings/thirsts, in order that we might direct our longings in a direction that yields satisfaction.