Psalms for Lent
2013. Psalm 63: 1 – 8:
Cling to God’s
right hand when you thirst for love!
1 You,
God, are my God, earnestly I seek you;
Like most true poets, the psalmist does not need many
words to show that there are times in our lives that are harder to endure than
others. The psalmist asks for reflection
on the tough days and hours of life and testifies to the depths of our
relationship with God these periods guide us to and inspire us to embrace.
1b “I
thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where
there is no water.”
It is in the dessert where we truly learn what it means
to be thirsty. So thirsty that one can
die.
All our sophistication and skills are of no use or value
when we are stripped of the options to resolve our thirst by our own efforts.
This is when we start to earnestly call upon the moist
breeze of having communion with God, to save us, to rescue us. It happens in God’s sanctuary. It occurs
during the hour of resuscitation when we lift our hands in praise and worship
in fellowship with God’s people.
2 I
have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because
your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.
4 I
will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.
After the Lord treated my parched lips of anxiety and my
fear of loss within the dry lands of my hopelessness by being upheld by the
Lord’s strongest hand, I will always remember his goodness!
I will even go to sleep with a fond memory of receiving
God’s love during the moments of thirst for answers, and courage and a new
vision of a satisfied life.
5 I
will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips
my mouth will praise you.
6 On
my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.
7 Because
you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.
8 I
cling to you; your right hand upholds me.
The worst lie that can be told, is to convince someone
dying of thirst that water cannot save him.
This is absolute foolishness. It is evil deceit!
Why do we then fall for the lie from hell that tells us
that being cynical about sharing with God and his people when we live through
the rough patches, can help us. That cessation from the Lord’s sanctuary can be a reasonable thing to do, when we experience painful thirst for love and for healing?
Why run away from God’s love, and from being healed by
bringing glory to him, when we are dying inside? When the waters of praising him and the
strength of his right hand, are the only resources we have that can help us?
Thirsty, sad human being who is destroyed by exhausting
loneliness and despondency: Come back to
the waters of worship.
Come to be saved
from yourself and your woes, by praise!
Come to see God in the place of worship and behold his
power and glory and receive faith that rescues from woe and sadness. (verse2).
Come, to cling to God’s right hand that upholds you!
(verse 8)
Come, to drink from the waters of God where he saves his
people from thirst!
Jesus said: “Everyone who drinks the water I give them will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give them will become in them
a spring of water, welling up to
eternal life.”
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