As a hart longs for flowing streams,
so longs my soul for thee, O God.My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?My tears have been my food day and night,
while men say to me continually,
“Where is your God?”These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul
(source: Psalm 42 RSVCE)
I’m thirsty, run out, spent, panting and ready to stampede toward the first hint of water. I’m drinking my own salt tears, tears bitter with the taunts of those who seem right, who seem to be “on the right side of history,” but who I can only respond to by pouring out my soul–expending myself in service to what is true, beautiful, good, and trampled. I thirst.
And as I am here, empty, thirsty, remembering my days of triumph and joy, I am overtaken by more water than I can handle, by the flash floods of your thundering goodness; your love looks more like the rapids I can’t handle, like the sea crashing over the heads of the haughty Egyptians, than like those cutesy photos of a deer sipping sweetly from some still pool:
I remember thee from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep at the thunder of thy cataracts;
all thy waves and thy billows have gone over me.
(source: Psalm 42 RSVCE)
And I remember what happens when you strike the rock, or obediently speak to Him.
The people found fault with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you find fault with me? Why do you put the Lord to the proof?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people murmured against Moses, and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand the rod with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, that the people may drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah and Mer′ibah, because of the faultfinding of the children of Israel, and because they put the Lord to the proof by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
(source: Exodus 17 RSVCE)