photo by z_everson on flickr

1 Psalm Of David When he was in the desert of Judah
God, you are my God, I pine for you;
my heart thirsts for you, my body longs for you,
as a land parched, dreary and waterless.
2 Thus I have gazed on you in the sanctuary,
seeing your power and your glory. Psalm 63:1-2Psalm 63:1-2
English: King James Version (1611) - KJV
63 A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. ¹ O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; thirsty: Heb. weary where...: without water ² To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.  

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The other day as I read Psalm 63, I was deeply moved by the first two verses (see above). When I tried to express what moved me, I wrote the following essay. Hopefully it makes sense and will bless someone.

Exiled in the wilderness, the psalmist gives voice to a wilderness deeper than the barren landscape. As he cries out to God, he gives voice to the ache and longing of people across the ages.

I have known the wilderness. Not the wilderness of desert living, or the wilderness of suffering under war, poverty or totalitarian rule. But I have known the wilderness of a dry soul, aching for something, someone.

When I was just four-years-old, I remember sitting amidst the toys and trappings of my Bozo-encircled room wondering, “Why do I exist?” In the stillness of the night or the quietness of the day, the longing for something or someone penetrated my heart even then. Looking through the fairy tale books, I longed to jumped inside the pictures and enter their world.

This longing opened the world around me as though everything was pointing beyond itself to something or someone. The soil in our backyard hid treasures just out of sight. The basement in our house pressed right up against other realities, powers, beings. In my childlike mind, the world seemed to open in two directions.

A thin veil stood between me and a world of light as well as a world of darkness. At times, everything around me seemed ready to burst forth in song at any moment. At other times and places, everything seemed pressing up against a terrifying void. This darkness threatened to disintegrate everything and everyone.

The hell I feared was not of fire but of isolation, disintegration, and absolute loneliness. In this world, hell would be waking up to no one. Consciousness without any relationship.

I could not survive by staring down into the abyss, so I searched for the light places, the holy places, the sanctuary. And like the psalmist, I’ve seen God’s glory and might in these thin places. I’ve found refuge and peace and joy within the wells of faith.

Like the sparrow who builds a nest, I found my nest in the faith of my fathers. I make no great claims to have disputed and disproved competing truth claims of world systems, religions, and ideologies. When facing the darkness, I’ve done what most children would do, I went home. Home to the faith of my fathers.

Wrestling with the claims of Christianity, I encountered the Who who kept calling, provoking, striking my heart. In the heart of Christian faith, I met Love in Person. So I write and speak and think from the position of one who keeps coming home to rest in Christ.

From this place of rest, I join the psalmist who prays,

“Whom have I in heaven but you Lord, and to be near you, I desire nothing on earth.” Psalm 73:25Psalm 73:25
English: King James Version (1611) - KJV
25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.  

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This short sentence has become something of a “breath prayer” for much of my life. Sometimes this prayer stood between me and the darkness. At first, this prayer was most likely a prayer of escape the struggles of this world.

Over time, I discovered something hidden deeper within the prayer. It is a prayer of relation that is not escaping earth by going to heaven. Rather, it is a prayer for relationship in the midst of the injustices, struggles and questions of this earth. The psalmist desires nothing of an earth where the Lord is absent, where humans are cut off from one another, where our own selfish cravings drive us further and further into isolation, destruction, and corruption.

The psalmist cries out not to be abandoned. He is not abandoned. The Father loves His creation. The Father loves His rebellious children who run from the light of His love. The same Lord who created the world in relationship, redeems the world in relationship.  The Father reconciles the world in and through the Son by the power of His Spirit. He enters into the breach of relationship between God and humanity. He brings all the anguish and suffering and disaster of this breach within Himself.

This restoration is about glorifying the entire cosmos in a relation of love. It is this relation, the mystery of this love revealed in Father, Son and Spirit, calling me into love, into relation, into life.

It seems now that the walk between darkness and light has been a walk between love and rejection of love. On the one hand, the Father has caught me up in a dance of love between Him and all His people. On the other hand, I am tempted to rejected this love, this dance.

In of our world of broken humans, rejecting love becomes so easy for all of us. We can be offended by almost every person we meet during the day. Real pain and real grief from the present combines with old offenses stretching back into relationships and even into childhood. We haunted by the ghosts of our past.
To escape, we may reject love, escape relation and plunge into a waterless wilderness of self-absorption, self-preservation, and self-consciousness. Life becomes heartless and lonely and hellish.

Into the Gehenna of our own creation, the Lord comes. He finds us on the refuse heap of corrupting self-imposed exile and adopts us into the family of God.

He leads us into sanctuary, into a thin place where heaven penetrates earth. We discover this holy place is a place of meeting, a place of relationship, a place of meeting. He is dancing a dance of love. In Him, we hear a song that is singing through all His creation.

Some days, I hear this anthem of love wherever I go. When I show up at the coffee shop, He’s already there loving the people in line, at the counter, sitting at the tables.

Might I join Him?
Might I follow Him into loving those who offend me, who disagree with me, who compete with me?
Might I join Him in loving the Mary Magdelene and others who are cast out and put down by the world around?
Might I also love those in power like the Pharisees?
Jesus is free to love those above and below, those oppressed and those who oppress. He freely embraces friends who will prove unfaithful, unreliable, and undependable.

He even embraces Judas. After a night of seeking the Father about who to appoint as disciples, Jesus welcomed Judas into this community of love. Even though He knew Judas would ultimately betray Him, He loved him, He welcomed him, He served him.

He loves and loves and loves and continues loving from the cross. This love is not momentary: I love you today, but tomorrow I may cut you off. This love is eternal: it crosses ages; it penetrates the good times and the bad times. While looking upon those who are killing Him, He prays for their forgiveness.

His dance of love is a dance on the edge of heaven and earth where light streams through into all people and places. Even the darkness. Especially the darkness.

In this dance, my steps are faltering and failing. I often choose anger over kindness and jealousy over graciousness. Even when I resist and reject His love, He continues calling, embracing, transforming.

He reminds me that I’ve really been adopted into the family of God. I’ve really been embraced by a Father who can turn every wilderness into a fruitful valley. I can really rest in His love. He is completely trustworthy.

Even when I face the darkness of suffering and death, He is still present. In Christ, I let go of pains, of sorrows, of hurts. I can rest. I can dance. By His grace, I am learning to live in the wonder that is bursting through everyone and every thing.

So I join the psalmist this day in crying out for sanctuary in the midst of the wilderness. Lord, I long for Your unfailing love, let me dance with you, in you, before you.

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