What we need is God

CS Lewis quotes George MacDonald in Anthology: “But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything” I answer, What if He knows Prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of Himself? … Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner … So begins a communion, a taking with God, a coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases.” (Anthology, p. 41. From Unspoken Sermons, 2nd Series, The Word of Jesus on Prayer).

Hardship may drive us back to God, but what we truly seek, what will fill the emptiness in our heart, isn’t related to the presence or absence of hardship. … We’re not going to find our relationship with God by striving for it in physical things. As it was with the lost child, hunger may have us searching for bread, but we aren’t home until we feel God’s loving presence. And that requires a yielding heart rather than struggle—self-surrender rather than self-effort. (from Turning Aside to See, chapt. 5, ©️ 2011)