Desperate for God

“I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land” ( Psalm 143:6 ).

When my 95-year-old father suffered a stroke, the brain damage caused him to cry out in terror every few minutes. To cope with this uncontrollable urge, he redirected his shouts to praise, thanksgiving, singing, reciting scriptures, and intercessory prayer for the family. You could hear him far down the hospital corridor as he battled in a voice urgent and pleading, face lifted upward, his one good arm raised heavenward.

How badly I wanted to relieve my father’s agony, but to meet that level of need far exceeded human capacity. How often he must have felt alone.

In parched seasons, it’s common to feel cut off from others, isn’t it? Our inner landscape may be dried out by desperation, doubt, insecurity, and unrelenting pain, or it may be arid for other reasons, but in such sun-scorched lands we thirst for only one thing—a living connection with the living God.

Jesus said, “Anyone who is thirty may come to me . . .” (John 7:37b) He is the fountain of life from which living water flows. No one who comes will be turned away. And no matter how many times we find ourselves parched on the dusty walk from here to eternity, the springs of living water never run dry.

So let us stretch out our hands, receive, and drink.

Prayer: Lord, we thirst. We look up and lift our feeble arms, like a child who wants its Papa and no one else will do. Amen.

Published with Lifesprings International, 7/14/20.