Scripture Daily

Context No. 1321 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 63:1-11: in context

1God, you are my God. I will earnestly seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh longs for you, in a dry and weary land, where there is no water. 2So I have seen you in the sanctuary, watching your power and your glory. 3Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you. 4So I will bless you while I live. I will lift up my hands in your name. 5My soul shall be satisfied as with the richest food. My mouth shall praise you with joyful lips, 6when I remember you on my bed, and think about you in the night watches. 7For you have been my help. I will rejoice in the shadow of your wings. 8My soul stays close to you. Your right hand holds me up. 9But those who seek my soul to destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth. 10They shall be given over to the power of the sword. They shall be jackal food. 11But the king shall rejoice in God. Everyone who swears by him will praise him, for the mouth of those who speak lies shall be silenced.

This is a psalm of thirst. God, you are my God, it begins; earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. The psalmist remembers seeing God's power and glory in the sanctuary, and makes a startling declaration: your steadfast love is better than life. So he will bless God as long as he lives, satisfied as with rich food, remembering God on his bed through the watches of the night, rejoicing in the shadow of God's wings, held up by his right hand. He ends confident that those who seek his life will fall, and the king will rejoice in God.

Two images carry the psalm. The first is thirst: my soul thirsts for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. The psalmist does not describe a mild preference for God but a bodily craving, the way a man in the desert craves water, his whole being aching for the one thing that will satisfy. It is a picture of desire for God that many of us would have to admit we rarely feel with such intensity, and it stands as both a rebuke and an invitation, showing us what the soul is actually made to want. The second is the line at the heart of it: your steadfast love is better than life. The psalmist has weighed God's love against life itself, against existence and all its goods, and found God's love the greater. That is a staggering scale of value, that the love of God is worth more than living, and it reorders everything; a person who truly believes it can face even death without being undone, because the one thing better than life cannot be taken by death. The thirst and the valuing belong together: the soul that has tasted enough of God to know his love is better than life is the soul that thirsts for him in the dry land. To seek him earnestly is to have begun to know he is worth more than everything else we could seek.

Do I thirst for God with anything like the bodily craving of this psalm, and have I weighed his steadfast love against life itself and found it, as the psalmist did, better than life?

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