I Thirst

Why are you cast down, O my soul?

And why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him

for the help of His countenance.

Psalm 42:5

We have sung the Psalm of David for more than a generation now: As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longs after thee! And yet until today I never understood the heart behind the song. This is not so much a personal acknowledgment of one man's desire for more of the Lord, as it is the desperate cry of a man in need to know His God.

David said that he panted after God like a deer fleeing the hunt. He thirsted for the presence of God, and wondered when he would next encounter the Lord. He was surrounded by enemies that mocked him, and his tears were all that nourished him. He recalls how it used to be, how wonderful it was to go with a multitude of worshipers into the house of God and experience his presence there. But now he is a man calling out to a memory: God, I want those days back!

Encountering the Lord is what I call a mountaintop experience. It is joyful and empowering, it is humbling and overwhelming. It is a great thing to be in the very presence of our Holy God, a wondrous thing. And how blessed it would be to stay there on the mountaintop, day and night, world without end, amen.

But I cannot stay here in this place with the Lord. I must move on, because there is another mountaintop to attain. There is a higher encounter, a deeper understanding, that must be had if I am to grow into the man God wants me to be. I must grow beyond the day of my birth. I must learn to trust the Lord in every rocky byway, in every dark valley, but I must also understand that I am on my way to higher ground! God doesn't desire a stagnant, stay-put people. He wants us to pursue Him from one mountaintop to the next, until at last we reach the heights of glory from which we will never descend.

David was not on the mountaintop when he wrote this Psalm. David was in a valley in the wilderness, cast down, unsettled, disturbed. Perhaps with eyes glancing back to a brighter day--like the day on which his father's voice called him to stand before the Prophet Samuel, or the day when the boldness of God rose up within him to confront a giant with a sling and stone--he recalls better times, and anticipates them again. Though he saw the lightning flashing, though he heard the thunder roll, though he felt the breakers crashing over his soul, he says, Deep cries unto deep! The depths of his soul still cried out for the depths of the the heart of the Lord. And in the darkness of his valley, David had the light of hope that sustained him.

He knew that the countenance of God was a blessing in life. Those eyes that never close still had him in sight. Those ears that never grew deaf still heard his cries. That reach without limit could still touch him wherever he was. And David's hope was in the Lord. The love of God would see him through the day, and the song of the Lord would see him through the night! Others might mock and question where his God was, but David knew.

And in the end of his song, he sings the refrain again, only this time acknowledging that the countenance of the Lord had brightened his own:

Why are you cast down, O my soul?

And why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God;

for I shall yet praise Him,

the help of my countenance and my God!

Psalm 42:11