Longing

Psalm 42

The consensus among Bible scholars seems to be that Psalms 42 and 43 are one composition. But for some reason they are in Scripture as Psalms in their own right so we will treat them as such.

In the dry season, the deer longs for flowing streams. That’s how the psalmist longs for God in the temple, an experience denied him due to a condition of exile. Note that he is not without God. He’s conversing with God (verse 8). But he longs for experience of God in the Temple. I would make this comparison: You play an musical instrument, you sing, just for the joy of it – in the shower maybe (well, not with your guitar, I hope). Or you sing to yourself when you’re out gardening. You pick up your oboe and play a Mozart melody. Or you’re pretty good at shooting hoops, or picking a top corner of hockey net with a tennis ball in the driveway. You can do this on your own.

But then you just long all the more to use that guitar in a band, to blend your voice with a couple of others in a vocal team, to sit down with your oboe in a chamber ensemble – and to experience the merging of the love of music, on the part of individuals, into a unified sound – all the more glorious in its unity for the variety within it. There’s something even mystic about it; on rare occasions you become like one in mind and spirit as you no longer play the music, but rather the music plays you, or through you: an appropriate and fitting use of the word medium.

Or you take that love of the feel of the hard surface of the basketball briefly touching and releasing as it presses into your hand, the roll of the ball off your fingers; and you add to that the sound of the ball on the gym floor, the squeak of your shoes joining others, the sweat building, the back and forth, the reaching for rebounds …. so much more than shooting hoops in your driveway.

Or you take that hockey stick and your bag and … well, you get the idea.

The Psalmist knows God. But he longs for something more than picking or singing or pressing his lips to that double-reed on his own. He longs to merge his voice and heart in a setting where God has been experienced as meeting and joining people together as one in him. But it’s about so much more, or less, than just looking for an experience, or “The Feeling,” as some call it. It’s not about what you get, but what you bring. That’s what so much worship strategizing misses: Everyone longs to give what they have to give. Most of us are tired of the whole ‘getting’ thing, I think, whether we consciously identify it or not. We sense that our real dignity is in giving, in offering, in losing ourselves in some way. Our worship needs to work to give people the opportunity to do that.

Maybe a part of the problem is that a lot of us who are already Christians have lost the longing. That’s sad. But I say all this by way of confession. When I read the following recently, it convicted me:

“Did it ever strike you odd that in contemporary Christian jargon, it’s the pre-Christians who are called seekers? Where does that leave the Christians? Shouldn’t Christian leaders be the lead seekers?” - Brian D. McLaren, in Adventures in Missing the Point, by Brian D. McLaren and Tony Campolo

Prayer:
God, I acknowledge with humility and relief that our knowing of each other is not an equal matter. Forgive me when I forget that. Every week I read about you, I study you, I analyze you, but I don’t know you at all, except as you choose to reveal yourself to me, through conversation that you allow. But whatever you choose to reveal is more than enough for me. And so I go on both knowing you and longing for you. In this is life. Through Christ. Amen.