Psalm 63 - A dry and parched land

Read: Psalm 63 vs 1-11

When you think of meeting with God, listening to Him and worshipping Him, where do you think of? For many of us our minds immediately go to ‘church’, a building in Ballyhenry or somewhere else that has many memories that encourage us or strengthen us in our faith.

Today we are reading psalm 63, a Psalm of David. In this Psalm David remembers meeting with God in ‘the sanctuary’ (vs 2) a place where David and others had gathered and a place where they had experienced God’s power and glory.

However as David writes this Psalm David is not able to be in the sanctuary, David (as the title of the Psalm tells us) is in the Desert, the Desert of Judah. I remember about fifteen years ago visiting the Middle East. There are a lot of deserts in that part of the world. When you read through the Old Testament you actually discover that God’s people spent a lot of their time, not gathered in ‘sanctuaries’ but on the move through deserts. 

Beersheba, Paran, Shur, Sin, Sinai, Zin, Etham, Kedemoth, Judah, Ziph, Maon, En Gedi, Damascus, Edom, Jeruel, Tekoa, Kadesh. These names not be the best known Bible names, but in fact they are the names, recorded in Scripture, of deserts, deserts where God’s people and deserts where God met with His people. 

I have been reading the Bible all my life and yet names like that remind me there is plenty of room for me to get to know my Bible better. What can I learn from what happened in the Desert of Shur? What is about what God revealed of Himself in the Desert of Kadesh that is helping to strengthen my faith? What can we learn from David’s experience of God in the Desert of Judah? The fact that I couldn’t answer those questions remind me that I have much to learn.

Deserts are featureless places. The days all merge in dry and parched lands where there is no water (vs 1). There are many foundational lessons about God to learn in desert places, but the deserts of the Old Testament point us forward to the one who can quench the thirst of all who long for life giving water. It is Jesus who says to us today:

‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ (John 7: 38)

Prayer: Lord on this journey that I am on one day can seem just like the last day. At times at the minute I feel weary. Lord Jesus help me to believe in You and to find my soul refreshed by the life giving water that you give. Amen.