Soul Comfort

"As the deer pants for water so my soul longs for you O, God." Psalms 42:1

Thanks to Amy Grant and Summer Bible School, it was one of the first verses I learned as a child. Repeat it, sing it, enough times and it tends to loose some of it's meaning. That as we have a need for water, the beverage that sustains life in all living creatures, we have an equally strong need for God. Without Him, we would die. And spiritually speaking, as we stray we experience spiritual and emotional death.

During hard times it's easy to forget. It's so easy to get caught up in routine. To rely on our own efforts to succeed (whatever that means). To accomplish items on our 'to do' lists, and then sit back and think, "Look what I did! I'm not doing half bad. In fact, look at all the stuff I got done today. I'm pretty awesome! Yay me!" Or just the opposite, to give up because we think we're not good enough. That it's better to avoid failure and just not try at all. Either way what we're really saying is, "Thanks God, but no thanks. I'll just take it from here. I've made it this far without your help, and I'm sure I'll make it through tomorrow just fine too."

Except, that God doesn't want us to be "just fine". He wants us to be MAGNIFICENT! And being magnificent requires us to rely on Him rather than our own efforts. Such magnificence requires just one thing, regular drinks of Living Water.

As most of you know, we've been going through a hard time. A very discouraging time. Every day passes, while we wait for miracles. So far, we haven't received any definitive answers, so we wait. And wait some more. Most of the time we spend trying to distract ourselves from all this waiting. We watch TV, we play computer games, we scour the internet for useless tidbits of info, and lately since the weather has been nice I've been outside gardening. But it's really just to forget. To pretend that what's happening isn't really happening.

And today something interesting happened...

I was thinking about back when I was in high school choir, so I did some searches on YouTube looking for songs we used to sing. Seems pretty harmless, right? Well, obviously God can work even within our time wasting because I came across one of my favorites, Sicut cervus by Palestrina. Within the first few bars I had a huge lump in my throat, and by the end I had tears. It's so hauntingly beautiful, the notes so beautifully express such longing. It aches with love. And so I wondered, because 14 years post high school I certainly don't remember, what does it mean? So I did another search and found this. "As the deer longs for springs of water, so my soul longs for you O, God."

Thank you, God. For speaking love into my life when I least expect it. For reminding me that you didn't design us to make it on our own, but to rely instead on Your strength and Your ability. I praise you Father, for caring for me. For lifting my burden. For filling me up to the brim with your Water. Amen!