My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
“Where is your God?” people say to me.
My tears are my food, my bones ache, my soul writhes,
and foes ask me, “Where is your God?”
Why, oh Lord, have you forgotten me?
A tortured writer pens these words. How ironic is this? The same question used by the peanut gallery to wound and taunt him was the blessed cry of his own soul. Don’t we all want to know: where is God?
We were made to walk with God, just as we were made to drink water. Every moment of every day, we stumble, bleed, and ache in this tarnished world, longing for what is right and good. We crawl along shards of a mirror that would have brought us such joy had we not broken it.
We were not created to be okay with less-than-perfect but have found ourselves saturated by it. We were designed by God to walk with God and know Him. Our wounds are bitter, bitter reminders that this world is not what it ought to be. This world and those in it reflect His heart so poorly. This pain is right, holy, blessed.
It is dehumanizing and exhausting to earn love because we were created to be loved unconditionally by the One who made us. It hurts because your soul remembers this, even if you don’t.
To be misunderstood, or (maybe worse) to be invisible is painful because you were made to be near to a God who knows you perfectly and understands you completely. Your soul remembers this, even if you don’t.
The list goes on—injustice, unfaithfulness, abuse, lack of forgiveness, insults, lies, betrayal, innocence being taken, loneliness, abandonment, death. With each, our soul revolts. With each, our soul grieves, remembering this is not what we were created to endure. Our souls remember we are separated from Him, and that is a literal taste of Hell. It’s no wonder we are daily imbued with pain.
Our pain is connected to, not separate from, the character of God and our desire to see it. Our pain is the fruit of wanting God in a world that will certainly fail to reflect Him. Our souls scream “where are You?” because they remember who He is. They long for His presence, even if we don’t.
This agony should drive us to Him, as a daughter runs weeping to her Father when bullies tell her she is not loved. The problem is a lack of God, His promises, His truth. So the only solution is His presence. He is the cure; all else is self-medication.
You have the choice to satisfy your needs with something other than God. You can try to soothe your pain from this world with a medicine this world offers. But, take it from someone who has been there and back: it is drinking salt water. It will not satisfy you and will ultimately cost you your life.
I had walked this path, putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. I continued to bleed out, limp, and suffer, but I also convinced myself it was better than enduring the pain of surgery and stitches. My soul fainted, day in and day out, until I despaired of life itself.
I can be sure of one thing. It is the one thing I, myself, will never forget again. To be separated from God is to be separated from our source of being, our purpose, our very breath. We lose everything if we deny ourselves that which sustains our life. What horrible, deadly pride we carry—revolting against a need simply because it exists and we wish it didn’t.
Our greatest and only need is the presence of God. The greater the gap between His presence and our heart, the greater our agony. If we push Him away with sin or by trying to fix the pain ourselves, we push away the Cure, the Healer.
It is no more shameful to admit your need for the Living Water than it is to admit you are thirsty. It is no more asinine to acknowledge the root of your suffering is separation from God than it is to reject a misdiagnosis. It is no more foolish to cling to what Jesus has done for you than it is to accept the correct medicine for your sickness.
You may be bitter, resigned, calloused from moment-by-moment torture, and numbed by whatever sedative you could grasp at. Consider the cost of ignoring so great a need and so free and wonderful its satiety.
To depend on and long for God is to be human. Do not deny your soul what it desperately needs. Pay attention to your fainting, aching soul before the plague takes your life. Turn now. Drink deeply of forgiveness, mercy, love. For He is more than enough to satisfy and more than willing to draw near to you if you draw near to Him.
As the deer pants for streams of water,
Psalm 42: 1-11
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food day and night
while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you…
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
JustAnotherWillow 