Sunburned (5)
O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; my soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Psalm 63:1 NASB
Weary – Exhausted. Ever feel like that? Physically and spiritually. Just too tired to go on. Just want to sleep, maybe even die. That’s the word ʿāyēp, “to be completely” and “utterly exhausted.” It’s used for the condition of the body after enormous effort or sustained malnutrition. It’s used of the spirit when God seems as far away as ever and we cry out for some kind of relief. You can think of the children of Jacob crying out to God from Egypt. Bodies broken, spirits shattered, they felt abandoned and hopeless as if wandering a desert, inside and outside, in a desolate land.
We’ve noticed that an oasis along the way isn’t really enough to satisfy and relieve this kind of exhaustion. Yes, it’s nice to have an occasional respite, but soon we will be back on the path, stumbling over the hot sand. Two things must happen before we will be refreshed. First, we need to recognize and deal with the fact that we are in a weary land. It’s far too easy to convince ourselves that the world isn’t really dried up. We see all the mirages, the glittering towers of human ingenuity, the billboards offering instant relief, the neon palms surrounding luxurious facades. We hear the echoes of Cain on the desert wind. “I will build my own refuge. I will manage my own fate. I will master myself. I don’t need God’s protection.” We page through the travel photos, enticed by the beautifully photo-shopped images. We imagine that we are exempt from those annoying news clips about the degradation of the environment. We ignore that panic deep in our souls.
But the blistering air keeps sucking the moisture out of our fantasies. Eventually we have to admit the world is precariously close to implosion. The planet is in trouble. Our home is succumbing to global exploitation. If we stay here like this, we will die.
That’s when we realize the same condition is true of our inner world. We’ve used up the last of our make-believe excuses. Our daydreams have turned into nightmares. There’s something wrong inside too. In both places, the real problem is too big for us to fix.
David’s cry is for both homes, the one where we are embodied and the one we borrowed from His spirit. We will have to find comfort for both bāśār and nepeš. Water for one without the other leaves us just as parched and desperate. Whatever God must do, He must do it for both. It’s simply wrong to think that we can be nourished spiritually while we are starving physically. When we really look, we know that true humanity is embodied fullness, spirit manifest in flesh.
When Yeshua stood at the feast and declared, “If any man thirsts, let him come to me and drink,” he was addressing David’s double need. The water Yeshua offers must satisfy both. If you’ve been carrying a canteen filled only for one, you’re still thirsty.
Topical Index: ʿāyēp, exhausted, weary, body, spirit, Psalm 63:1
We’ve spent a few days on one verse. Imagine what would happen if we put the same effort into all the verses?
“Imagine what would happen if we put the same effort into all the verses? “
Yes, imagine. We would be so occupied attempting to decipher these words there would be no time or energy for war or other lifeless things.
Let’s try it.
The Bible is unique among all books in that the words can come alive in our souls, minds and lives. Every person that comes in faith to the Book brings a different perspective and a different need, and every person will derive something out of it that is just for them. I do not think that means it is to be privately INTERPRETED; it means that it is to be personally applied. The Bible is alive; it is interactive; it shines through the multiplicity and the duplicity of interpreters, expositors and detractors and it speaks to the blindest and the most deceived with the clarity that only love has.
No other book comes with its own Interpreter; its own interactive Modem, and no other book can write itself into the heart in a completely unique way for each person, yet will NEVER contradict itself or cause anyone to contradict another. The perfect harmony of love permeates its pages and its followers, and to the extent that they allow it to come alive in them and to change them they will enjoy perfect harmony with others; the perfect harmony that only comes from the uniqueness of the individuality and specialness it restores in every earnest reader.
It has never ceased to amaze me that the Book that unifies is the Book that simultaneously succeeds in empowering the uniqueness of the human. Discord comes from disconnection. The Bible gives us the tools of love with which to repair the fractures but it does it by drawing out the personal experience and restoring the legitimacy of the individual that sin obliterated. I am able to harmonize with and to empower those around me to the extent that my unique identity has been restored. The Bible is a personal Book with universal application; it celebrates the personal human in the act of restoring them back to humanity.
To agonize with David is to bring our own unique agony to the common experience of what it means to be a human. We can ‘get’ the fullness of what he tried so hard to put into words by resonating – harmonizing – our own experience with his. His agony becomes real at the same rate ours does; he comes alive to us across the pages of time when we touch the cord of human sympathy within ourselves.
The valleys of dead mens’ bones are no match for the Book; countless millions have heard correctly the voice of love speaking through the human pens of long ago and have been restored to life by the words it contains. That Book is written on every heart in a unique way that only that heart can read, for the Writer is still writing it in you and in me. Halleluah!
Imagine…
We can fill our cisterns with refreshing waters from study, fellowship, etc but eventually even vast cisterns grow stagnant. It is the living waters, that flows continually through the spirit that bring consistent and reliable refreshment. It is the word enlivend by the spirit, the fellowship saturated with “the Presence ” that refreshes. My wife and I for many years would say we are like the Bedouin who can walk for miles and even cross “the Anvill” on a few mouthfulls of living water. When you taste the real thing the water that is mixed, stagnant or utherwise corupted simply will not satisfy. Yet to realize it is in the Presence that we have life and that to the full helps one choose to get off the shore and into the river…Yeshua is the river, the Spirit is the way. The Father is the author of it all.
“David’s cry is for both homes, the one where we are embodied and the one we borrowed from His spirit. We will have to find comfort for both bāśār and nepeš. Water for one without the other leaves us just as parched and desperate. Whatever God must do, He must do it for both.”
WEARY/ EXHAUSTED – A couple of weeks ago, my 90 year old mother, Shirley, finished “the race” set before her. She had been happily married for 70 years to one and only one man, Stephen, my father, who continues to press on, now relatively by himself, in his life of faith. She had 6 children, 4 daughters-in-law, 10 grandchildren, 8 great grandchildren, and two more on the way. Also, she survived all of her own younger siblings and almost all of her own peers, and left behind a myriad of people whom she had made to feel as though they were her favorite one, whom she had touched with her hugs and with her deep, strong, and steady life of faith, love, compassion, daily prayers, and sense of humor.
HOWEVER, though she did have cancer in the last year of her life, she suffered no real physical pain, BUT, NEVERTHELESS, SHE WAS WEARY AND EXHAUSTED…..of bāśār! Her frame had finally failed her. Though her nepeš was very strong, expressing love and gratitude, showing personal interest and caring concern, smiling, joking, and laughing until the end, her bāśār gave way. She couldn’t see very well at all. Couldn’t hear very well without her hearing aids. Couldn’t get around, even with help, any further than back and forth from her bed to her portable potty to her recliner and back to bed again at the end of the day.
SHE WAS JUST PLAIN WEARY of bāśār and wanted to die. She didn’t want to live anymore. She wasn’t in despair. She wasn’t bitter. She wasn’t miserable or otherwise suffering in this life. She just had no more energy to want to live and wanted to die. Not because she was weary of nepeš, in an of itself, but only because she was weary of bāśār. She wanted the comfort of death, until she could get her new body. She wanted to go and “be with the Lord”.
Not a bad way to go, really. Quite satisfied of nepeš. Just ran out of steam. WEARY OF bāśār. Really tired, ready to fall asleep, ready to enter her rest, and ready to wake up with a new body, and…..in a new home.
“O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; MY SOUL THIRSTS FOR YOU, MY FLESH YEARNS FOR YOU, IN A DRY AND WEARY LAND WHERE THERE IS NO WATER.” [Ps. 63:1]