Psalm Chapter 63

Psalm 63: Thirst in the Wilderness

David is in the wilderness of Judah — sun-scorched, waterless, hunted — and he writes what may be the most passionate love poem in the Psalter. "My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is." Notice that the thirst is not despite the wilderness but somehow sharpened by it. The very absence of comfort has concentrated his desire until it has become something almost unbearable and entirely beautiful. And then the extraordinary claim: "Thy lovingkindness is better than life." Better than life itself. One does not say such a thing lightly, and David does not. He says it from a place where life is genuinely threatened, where the wilderness could kill him as easily as his enemies. Yet in the night watches, lying awake on the hard ground, he meditates on God and finds his soul "satisfied as with marrow and fatness" — the richest feast imaginable, spread in the emptiest place. The wilderness has not changed. But the man in it has discovered that the deepest hunger was never for water.

00:00 My Soul Thirsteth for Thee
01:00 In the Shadow of Thy Wings