The thirst comes before the song

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" Psalm 42:1-2

We sing this psalm in church as a calm declaration of love. Read the comparison closely: it is a parched animal, short of water. The Hebrew verb describes panting.

And the question that follows is not a figure of speech: when shall I come and appear before God? The man writing cannot get there. The next verses say so: he remembers walking to the house of God among the crowd, with shouts of joy — and he is far from it now. Around him, people ask him all day long: "where is thy God?"

So this psalm is not the song of a satisfied man. It is the song of a deprived one.

That changes what to do with it. If you long for God without feeling him near, you are not outside worship — you are exactly inside this psalm. Thirst is already a form of worship. It testifies that you know the spring.

Nobody thirsts for what he has never drunk. The lack you feel is a memory as much as a need.

And the psalm does something very concrete with that thirst: it talks to itself. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? hope thou in God. Twice in Psalm 42, a third time in Psalm 43. He does not console himself, he gives himself an order — and he has to repeat it, because once is not enough.

Today. Do not wait to feel something before worshipping. Tell God you are thirsty for him. That is the first word of the psalm, and it was enough to get it into the Bible.

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