Richness in the Desert

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Bella Gamboa JE ‘22

Pictured: Steeping tea

O God, you are my God; 

earnestly I seek you; 

my soul thirsts for you; 

my flesh faints for you, 

as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

- Psalm 63:1

Longing is a familiar feeling. We miss those we love who are far away from us; we yearn for a return to normalcy and the end of this pandemic; we literally, physically hunger as every few hours our bodies require additional sustenance.

In Psalm 63, King David of Israel,  the psalmist according to the psalm’s title, captures in beautiful but fraught language his longing—for God. David desperately thirsts for God, as he would for refreshment “in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Certainly David, whether in his youth as a shepherd, or later in his life as a king on military campaigns, was familiar with physical thirst and the desolation of a dry desert; indeed, the title tells us that this psalm is from when David was “in the wilderness of Judah.” Even if most contemporary readers aren’t so familiar with such conditions, David’s simile remains evocative, and we understand his feeling of dehydration and thirst. 

But what does it mean for David to thirst for God? Such an idea can feel frustratingly nebulous; God is not a sip of water from an animal skin (or Hydroflask).

Though we might not always be able to identify the object of our desires as readily as David does, I do think that we hunger and thirst for God. Various human longings which we do not even associate with God might make David’s words more palatable: his experience of hunger can matter to people who have never encamped in the Judean wilderness, or even thought about desiring a God who may or may not exist. 

From a Christian perspective, a longing for God can be quite easily explained: we are God’s creation, made in His image, according to the creation account in Genesis. Yet as a result of our human imperfections, we are not the best versions of ourselves, and we are not connected to God as we ought to be. We experience a sort of God-shaped hole—the result of separation from the One who made us, and of the original perfection of creation.  

The silhouette of this God-shaped hole results from God’s character and nature, which shapes human longings. Our need for relationships is consistent with the Christian Trinity. If God is three Persons in One, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, He has been in relationship within the different Persons of the Trinity for all time, before there were angels or humans or anything other than Himself. (The Trinity is really hard, perhaps even impossible to understand, but one can try to envision this intrapersonal and interpersonal relationship without trying to detangle the Trinity.) Made like God, humans naturally desire companionship and intimate relationships. And if we are created by but distanced from a God who knows us so intimately that “even the hairs of your head are all numbered”  (Luke 12:7), we understandably long to be known deeply—in ways that are often elusive in relationships with humans as limited as ourselves, rather than an omniscient Father.

Likewise,  people hunger for beauty—a natural impulse if we are children of the Creator of a beautiful, complex, and creative world. That God is a God of abundance and beauty is apparent in the lovely language of Psalm 65:

You water [the earth’s] furrows abundantly,

settling its ridges,

softening it with showers,

and blessing its growth.

You crown the year with your bounty;

your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,

the hills gird themselves with joy...

they shout and sing together for joy. (Psalm 65:9-13)

The Lord’s bountiful provision and the verdant loveliness of the natural world reflect His nature as well as our own. We are made for the fullness of hills and valleys that “shout and sing together for joy,” yet are so far from that reality; longing and dissatisfaction are a natural result of this disparity between what is and what ought to be. 

But for one who, like David, believes in and is in relationship with God, how can that hunger for Him be so acute? Perhaps conversion or Christian life evokes an image of sudden fulfillment and rosy, uncomplicated perpetual contentment—but that is a superficial and inaccurate expectation. 

Mother Teresa, the iconically self-sacrificial nun, experienced a profound sense of God’s absence for decades; in one letter, she laments “Where is my faith?—even deep down, right in, there is nothing but emptiness & darkness. My God—how painful is this unknown pain. It pains without ceasing.—I have no faith. – I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart—& make me suffer untold agony.” [1] She seems to have felt stranded in “a dry and weary land where there is no water,” distant from the refreshment of faith, a sense of God’s love, and relief from her agony. 

Mother Teresa’s words recall those of another psalm, in which the psalmist (in this case, not David), addresses God:

As a deer pants for flowing streams,

so pants my soul for you, O God…

When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my food day and night,

while they say to me all the day long,

“Where is your God?” (Psalm 42:1-3)

Even the deeply devoted experience spiritual droughts and doubts; at times, God’s living water feels absent, and only our own tears and pain seem to remain.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,

 beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life,

 my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live;

 in your name I will lift up my hands.

- Psalm 63:2-4

David responds to his thirst by seeking out an oasis. Even as he internally experiences a desert, he enters into “the sanctuary,” where God is present regardless of his internal state, and there “behold[s God’s] power and glory.” Sometimes, actions do what feelings cannot, and are themselves an important part of a life of faith; emotions are slippery and difficult to control, but our feet are much more easily directed. David, despite his internal drought, goes to the sanctuary, as Mother Teresa continued to serve and love others even when she did not feel God’s love. 

In seeking out God in His sanctuary, David—and, in her way, Mother Teresa—responds to a divine invitation: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” (Psalm 81:10) The Lord tells His people, whom He has provided for and protected in the past, to open their mouths to receive His fulfilment. David and Mother Teresa acted in response to God’s promises and their understanding of His character, even if their feelings did not match their minds and deeds. David, with parched lips, praises God not out of upwelling emotion, but from his conviction that God’s “steadfast love is better than life.”

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,

 and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,

when I remember you upon my bed,

 and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

for you have been my help,

 and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.

My soul clings to you;

 your right hand upholds me.

- Psalm 63:5-8

In a striking reversal from the opening lines of the psalm, David exclaims that his formerly famished “soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,” and his longing is replaced with joy. Though he anticipates such satisfaction in the future tense, leaving his current state ambiguous, he seems confident of this fulfilment and joy. David opened his mouth wide and anticipates God’s filling it. Proverbs offers some insight into the change David has experienced: “From the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach is satisfied; he is satisfied by the yield of his lips” (Proverbs 18:20). In making God’s praise the yield of his lips—in acting and praising regardless of how he felt—David’s words produced Godly fruits that fill him.

David acts out of his confidence in God’s promises, even when they were not apparently fulfilled. But God has not left those who long for Him—that is, all of humanity—without hope of satisfaction or fulfillment, the fruit of His promises. God commits to sating us with His Son, Jesus, who calls Himself  “‘the bread of life…. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’” (John 6:48, 51) 

It does seem incredibly nebulous and unapproachable—the idea that this intangible God allegedly sent His Son (whatever that means) a couple millennia ago and now expects us to be filled by Him. Indeed, following Christ does not always provide perceptible feelings of satisfaction and plenty, as Mother Teresa and David indicate. But that hunger for God feeds our curiosity about Him; a sense of His distance or a longing for Him can, paradoxically, draw us closer to God. Learning more about Him in turn makes us increasingly aware of imperfections in ourselves and our world and can increase our longing for what is lacking. Thus, thirsting for God creates a sort of positive feedback loop, increasing both our longing for and closeness to Him.

Our thirst for God propels our steps to His temple, even when our hearts do not viscerally rejoice in His love. Even small, seemingly undivine moments of goodness and fullness—when the “hills gird themselves with joy” in the New England autumn, when laughter or a good conversation with a friend provide some glimpse of God’s ever-present, even if not always felt, love—provide an appetizer for our ultimate satisfaction “as with fat and rich food.” These breadcrumbs, sacralized by the Bread of Life, feed our hope of finally sitting at God’s table.

Notes

[1] McGrath, Sheila and Harrington, Teresa Ann. “The Doubts of a Saint: Mother Teresa’s Unfelt Faith.” Sisters of St. Benedict, St. Mary Monastery. Accessed December 4, 2020. https://www.smmsisters.org/who-we-are/sister-stories/86/the-doubts-of-a-saint.

[2] All Biblical quotations from the ESV   translation.

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