"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?"
Then this morning, I read Psalm 143.
"I spread out my hands to you;
my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.
Answer me quickly, O LORD; my spirit fails."
I've read these words many times, but I wonder sometimes if I have read over them. Yeah, yeah, I know what they say, and my eyes jump. ♫As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul panteth after theeeee! I want you more than any other, so much more than anything . . . . ♫ I can even sing it (in at least two different versions), but do I know it? Do I really know it?
Thirst.
There is a desperation to thirst. Hunger is terribly unpleasant, but there is a desperation to thirst. We can go for 30-40 days without food (and more, for most of us in North America who are carrying at least a two-week supply of food around our middles), but we can only go for three days without water.
Thirst is all-consuming. When you're hungry, you can kind of put the hunger to the back of your mind for a while, but when you're thirsty, it's all you can think about. And the longer you go without water, the more desperate you get. (I'm getting thirsty just writing about being thirsty.) I haven't been really thirsty very often, but I've been thirsty enough that even lake water that I know probably contains bacteria and parasites begins to look pretty darn good, and the trickling sound of water running over rocks in that nearby stream drives me almost to distraction. I begin to think, Surely one mouthful won't make me sick. I could just put the cold water in my mouth and swish it around, and spit it back out. Just think how good it would feel just to have that cold water in my mouth. I have to admit, I've taken the risk once or twice in my life and dipped my hand in the stream.
Because thirst cannot be denied or ignored. Hunger is a nagging emptiness, but thirst is intolerable and demanding.
And I wonder, Have I ever really felt that desperate for God? Hungry for God, yes. A sort of gnawing emptiness in the pit of my belly, yes. But thirsty? Desperate for him? So longing for His presence that I feel like I can't wait one more second, let alone a minute or an hour?
That kind of desperation frightens me. Desperate people do stupid things. Shipwrecked people, in desperation, drink ocean water that kills them. People who don't have access to clean water drink anything and end up with a gutful of parasitic infection that causes such severe diarrhoea that they die of dehydration anyway. How do I know that I'm not going to do something spiritually stupid and start drinking from cisterns of my own making rather than from the Water of Life? I've seen people do it, swallow down any theology or theory that seems to slake a thirst, only to discover that the water is bitter and rots their bones, or, even worse, never discover it, and die a slow death drinking deadly water. I get frightened of that kind of desperation. Yet that kind of unshakeable thirst is what the psalmist described.
Because this world is a desert. It sucks the life out of you, sometimes all at once, like being dropped in Death Valley, sometimes bit by bit, like a prolonged drought in a land that is normally quite green. Sometimes you end up dry without even really realising it until the thirst awakes with a roar.
The world is a desert, and I'm beginning to feel how dry I am. I am thirsty. Very thirsty. "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for you, like a parched land thirsts" for those drops of life-giving rain. I'm not reading over those words right now. They are resonating with me. "My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God." I'm beginning to feel that kind of desperation. I don't want puddles and pools of stagnant water. I want the Living God. I'm thirsty -- thirsty for him.
So I'm praying.
"Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God."
"Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul."
I'm praying he will satisfy my thirst. I'm praying he will lead me to streams of living water and give me the wisdom to avoid the polluted waters of my own cisterns. I'm praying for rain. And I trust he will answer.
"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me."
All that water sounds like heaven to a thirsty soul.
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