Thirsting for God

As the deer longs for the water-brooks,
so longs my soul for you, O God.
I thirst for God, for the living God;
when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?

– Psalm 42:1-2

Dear church family,

One of my earliest memories of church as a child was a song that was based on this Psalm called “As the Deer.” We used to sing it a lot, and over many years it had a way of imprinting itself on my heart (which, by the way, is how the liturgy works—what seems like repetition is actually a holy rhythm that slowly becomes a part of our lives…but I digress.) The part of the song that resonated with me was not just the music, but the image of thirsting for God.

On the one hand, especially to a kid, it made no sense. If God was a spirit and lived in heaven, how could a person be thirsty for God? But on the other hand, there was something about the idea that did make sense—the part about having a longing deep inside myself for a connection with something greater, something more beautiful, something more eternal than my own little life.

I don’t think it was scientific proof I was after. After all, there have been philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God for centuries, and while they are great for the brain to chew on, they aren’t necessarily nourishing for the soul. I think what I wanted was an experience of God, a God who wasn’t simply a spirit living light-years away, but a God who was part of my life, nourishing my body, mind, and spirit the way a cold glass of water soothes a parched throat.

Have you ever longed for God in that way? Maybe it was a time in your life when you felt very alone and began to wonder if your life really mattered. Maybe it was a time when you received a scary diagnosis or some bad news and didn’t know what the next day would bring. Maybe it was a time when you were at a crossroads, and needed to make an important decision about a job or a relationship and didn’t know which path to choose.

In times like that, I think we really do thirst for God. I think we need reassurance that somewhere behind all the uncertainty and pain, there is a greater story in which our lives belong—a story that ends not with death but with resurrection. We are about to begin the season of Lent, a time in the church year when we take a step back and return to “the source,” what’s at the heart of our lives as Christians: our baptism into Christ. It’s in our baptism that God satisfies our longing for relationship in a way that mere words could never do: by quenching our thirst with living water and writing our lives into the story of salvation.

As we journey through these forty days to the cross, there will be many ways for us to encounter that life-giving story. On Ash Wednesday, we will be marked with ashes in the sign of the cross, a reminder that even when we return to the dust, we will be safe in God’s keeping. We will gather on Wednesday nights to share dinner together, catch up on each other’s lives, and sing Evening Prayer together in the candlelit sanctuary. We will be nourished each Sunday in the Eucharist with living bread from heaven. And we will walk together through the beauty and mystery of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil, where through every word, sign, symbol, and sacrament the church can muster, we will experience the power of the resurrection in our ordinary lives.

All of us thirst for God. Please make time in your schedule this Lent for God to quench your thirst. The abundance of God’s well never runs dry.

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +