"Pray for Me". Kenneth H. Carter Jr.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands and call on your name.
My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,
and my mouth praises you with joyful lips
when I think of you on my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
they shall be given over to the power of the sword,
they shall be prey for jackals.
But the king shall rejoice in God;
all who swear by him shall exult,
for the mouths of liars will be stopped.—Psalm 63
To thirst is to long for something essential. The psalmist knew about this longing. Psalm 63 is a psalm of David, the ascription tells us, when David was in the wilderness of Judah.
Do we know what it is like to thirst for something essential in the wilderness? Amid loneliness and isolation many search for community in a variety of ways. I once served a church that included a very fine bass voice among the men, and each summer he would sing the national anthem at the local Minor League Baseball game. It was always wonderful, and many of us came along to enjoy the game and offer moral support. This outing usually occurred on what was known as Thirsty Thursday. If you use your imagination, you can figure out what Thirsty Thursday was all about! Lots of people—very thirsty people—sharing fellowship; at the same time, a baseball game was taking place!
But thirst has a more basic meaning. I opened the newspaper a few months ago to read about a local woman’s trip to Bolivia. I have traveled to this beautiful country. She had been, more specifically, to Cochabamba. I’ve been there as well. Bolivia is landlocked—devoid of harbors and beaches, and water supplies are critically low. The people of Cochabamba were rioting because of lack of water. Very thirsty people.
It is not accidental that the scriptures speak of water in describing our human longings and desirings. My soul thirsts for you, for God, the psalmist writes, in the midst of the wilderness.
Invitation to reflect: Do we know what it means to thirst for God? to want God as much as a man or woman in the midst of the Judean wilderness wants something essential, a drink of water? to want God as much as the people of Cochabamba, who were rioting for water?
To thirst for God is to desire God; it is to know that God is essential. Sometimes we have to be in the wilderness before we recognize our thirst, our desires. The Bible speaks of wilderness as a place of testing, trial, emptiness, absence. The rabbis called the wilderness the school of the soul. In the wilderness we discover the essential.
If you have experienced a serious illness or medical uncertainty, you know about wilderness. If you have experienced any form of prejudice, you know about wilderness. If you have lived in depression, you know about wilderness. If you have felt like you were in the wrong place or have walked in the darkness of grief, you know about wilderness. To be in the wilderness is like being in a dry and weary land without water. In the Christian season of Lent, we see the geography of wilderness in our spiritual lives. Lent is forty days of wilderness, a time of discovering that the temptations of Jesus are our own testings. Lent reminds us that life is difficult, and, further, that Christian life is difficult. There are mountaintops, but there are also valleys. There are rainbows, but there are also storms. There are sunrises, but there are also sunsets. There are Easter mornings, but there are also Good Fridays. There are beautiful spring days, but there is also the dead of winter. Most of us have made this journey. We’ve been there!
Invitation to reflect: Recall a wilderness experience that called forth your deep prayers, for self and others. When did the experience occur, and what was it like?
Psalm 63 helps us name all of this. John Chrysostom, an early church father, insisted that “no day should pass without singing this Psalm.” We plan our lives, we make preparations, we try to control outcomes and events, but some day, some time, somewhere, when we least expect it, we will find ourselves in the wilderness. It helps to know that. A false teaching about Christianity denies this truth, claiming that if we love God, if we follow Jesus, if we serve our neighbor, life will blossom in abundance and overflowing. We discover insights about two realities of life in this psalm: spiritual dryness and spiritual darkness.
Invitation to reflect: Recall a time when you prayed in the midst of darkness and dryness. What was the experience like? What did you learn about yourself? And what sustained you?
One of the Screwtape Letters of C. S. Lewis talks about spiritual dryness. Screwtape, writing to his nephew, who is a devil in training, describes the work of God that goes on in our lives: “In His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.”3 This remarkable comment follows not much later in the letter: “The prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.”4
Spiritual dryness implies thirsting for something, desiring something, maybe God. We also may know spiritual darkness. The psalms refer repeatedly to this condition:
I . . . meditate on you in the watches of the night. (Ps. 63:6)
Surely the darkness shall cover me. (Ps. 139:11)
In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by. (Ps. 57:1)
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil. (Ps. 23:4)
For most Christians, wilderness is a part of the faith journey. There are times to bask in the sunshine and times to hide in the shadows. Psalm 63 describes the shadow times in life. Many people turn to the Bible, and maybe even to the church, for safety, for security, for refuge. The psalmist writes, “You have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy” (v. 7).
What does it mean to be in the shadow of God’s wings? In the darkness, we cannot always see, and yet we trust. In the darkness, we sense the dangers of life, and yet we trust. In the darkness, we sense that death is approaching, and yet we trust: in the words of an old hymn, “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.”
In the Christian tradition this experience has been known as the “dark night of the soul.” In the dark night there are no visible signs of God’s presence; it may be the pruning we read about in John 15; in the Passion, it is the stripping down of Christ, the emptying that we read about in Philippians 2; in the seasons of the year, it is the cold and snow of winter. The dark night purges all our assumptions, our support systems, all forms of light. We are in the darkness.
And yet, paradoxically, we find ourselves in the shadow of God’s wings. There we sing, “Abide with me.” In the dark night of the soul, God is preparing us for the light.
We encounter times of spiritual dryness and spiritual darkness throughout our journeys. How do we live, how do we survive, how do we make our way through wilderness times? How do we intercede? One answer is that we are given the desire for something, a desire for something that will quench our thirst, a desire for something that will light our way.
And so we return to the questions What do we desire the most? What is essential? Of course, our desires can get all out of focus. We can desire the wrong things; these become compulsions, addictions. Marketers can teach us to desire what that may or may not be helpful to us.