My soul thirsts for You

Have you ever been thirsty?  Honestly, I haven't.  I have always had water readily available to me.  I do not know what it means to thirst.  Dad gave me this book the other day about two men from Romania who ran away from their country.  They would have been persecuted for being known Christians in the army.  So they first went to Italy and then paid someone to put them on a cargo boat in a big box and sent to Canada.  Their story is amazing.  What they thought would be a few days, ended up being weeks.  They ran out of water and started to get dehydrated.  One of them described what his skin felt like when he took a shower for the first time after being in this ordeal.  How his skin was even thirsty and plumped up as the water rained down on him.  I read that yesterday and was struck by those words.  Then today, as I started reading Psalm 42,  I realized I don't know what true thirst is.  Even when it comes to God.  I have never been to a point in my relationship with God like that.  I am not saying that I haven't turned away from him at some point and then turned back.  I think we have all done that in some way.  Every time we sin we do that.  

I am thankful for the fact that I have been able to come back to God time and time again.  He listens to me, brings people into my life that makes me want to follow him, and helps me as I struggle with my times in the valley of life.   God gives me a song to sing.  I try to sing it every day.  Sometimes I don't feel like it.  Sometimes I do.  But every day is a new time to start over and keep his commands.

 

Psalm 42

  ¹As the deer pants for the water brooks,
         So my soul pants for You, O God.
    ²My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
         When shall I come and appear before God?
    ³My tears have been my food day and night,
         While they say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"
    ⁴These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me
         For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God,
         With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
    ⁵Why are you in despair, O my soul?
         And why have you become disturbed within me?
         Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
         For the help of His presence.
    ⁶O my God, my soul is in despair within me;
         Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan
         And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
    ⁷Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls;
         All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.
    ⁸The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime;
         And His song will be with me in the night,
         A prayer to the God of my life.
    ⁹I will say to God my rock, "Why have You forgotten me?
         Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?"
    ¹⁰As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me,
         While they say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"
    ¹¹Why are you in despair, O my soul?
         And why have you become disturbed within me?
         Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,

         The help of my countenance and my God.