Zoom calls simultaneously meet and mock our needs for community. We have a love/hate relationship with Zoom and other technological platforms in our house. As much as we look forward to connecting with friends, we are worn out and teased after having done so virtually.

Lat night, we had a blast last night doing a video scavenger hunt with our community group. We laughed at each other trying to recreate movie scenes and attempting to catch food tossed from six feet away.  If you would have told me how much an hour zoom call doing stupid tasks would mean to our family a few months ago, I might have laughed in your face. After all, I hate the phone, and we are not really scavenger hunt people. Or we weren’t. Before COVID.

We ended the call equal parts satisfied and wanting. I won’t attempt to further explain the strange feelings, because you have likely been feeling them frequently yourselves.

Isolation and the prolonged and unnatural absence of the physical presence of others has been revealing something many of us have taken for granted so much that we became indifferent or even annoyed by it. When life is over-full and our schedules are strained to fit all the events and errands we attempt to shove into them, the constant presence of people can begin to feel like an intrusion or an interruption.

Yet, after months of sheltering in place, even my introverted, quiet loving self has been longing for the presence of people, for friendships not mediated through a screen and passworded call. I cannot even imagine my higher capacity extroverted friends.

This extended exclusion of physical presence is priming and preparing our hearts to better appreciate the intended design of humans. We were created in the image of Triune God, three in one, one in three. As such, we were made to thrive in an ecosystem of relationships. We are wired for proximity, touch, and face-to-face interaction.

Christ himself, God-made-man, longed for human proximity, as strange as that may seem. While studying Luke 22 today, the awkward, seemingly redundant phrasing of the original Greek stood out to me as it never had before.

At the beginning of the Passover meal with his disciples on the eve of what would be his horrific death, Luke, ever the detailed doctor and writer, remembered Jesus saying the following, intensely human words.

And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you that I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Luke 22:14-16.

While earnestly desired is a strong phrase, that translation does not even come close to capturing the emphasis placed on the strength of Jesus’s desire to be with his friends that night. More literally translated, the sentence reads “with desire I have desired.”

Before COVID, I might have scoffed at such intensity of wording and desire. But I believe we are beginning to understand what it means to desire with great desire the presence of our loved ones.

The elderly husband separated from his lifetime companion who is suffering alone in the hospital desires with great desire to be able to sit by her side and hold her hand. The grandparents who have not been able to hold their newborn grandchild desire with great desire to hold that blessed bundle. The lonely and isolated mother desires with great desire to be able to go to a park and share her mothering burdens with her playgroup friends again. The single girl in the apartment next door desires with great desires to host her supper club again so that she can laugh and remember she is not alone.

Jesus spoke those words at the feast he shared with his friends on the eve of his death. He mentioned that he would not feast like that again until another coming feast.

While physical meals in the presence of unmasked family and friends are coming (sooner for some than others… but coming nonetheless), a better feast is coming. This feast will be the fulfillment of what Jesus mentioned on that night when he desired with great desire to be with closest friends. This feast will be the feast that even the most elaborate weddings weakly foreshadowed. This feast won’t end, and it will feature the physical, tangible, unmediated presence of Jesus.

Oh, that we would desire with great desire that feast and that particular presence. We were wired for it and He has promised it. Lord, haste the day!