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You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. Psalm 63:1

David wrote this Psalm in a place of solitude, a place out in the wilderness where no one was looking. He could have been his own man out there, breaking free from the requirements of the Jewish religious traditions. Or he could have thrown the largest pity party and succumbed to feelings of worthlessness and of blaming others, or of giving up.

But he didn’t do any of that. Psalm 63 gives us a glimpse into the heart and the character of a person who is the same whether he is at the temple with other worshipers, or in a lonely desert far away from the temple and the people who go there.

In verse 1, David uses the physical terrain as the image for how thirsty he is for God. He is in a wilderness, a dry and weary land where there is no water. In his commentary on this psalm, Calvin uses words like howling wasteland, wild, hideous solitude, and distracting horrors to describe this place. The Hebrew word used for it is midbar. It’s a wilderness of uninhabited land where flocks of sheep or goats are allowed to forage for grass and vegetation. It’s a place where survival has no guarantee. Everyone–man and animals–are doing all they know how just to stay alive.

David uses this picture to confess his desperate need for God’s presence. His soul thirsts for God. His whole being longs for God. It’s like he’s saying his very person is like this parched wasteland waiting and pining for the replenishing waters of God’s presence. He feels as though God is absent and he knows he won’t survive unless God returns.

Verses 2 through 5 tell us that David has had rich and satisfying experiences of God in the past. He has been to the holy place, to the sanctuary, where God made himself known to his people. David has been overwhelmed by God’s power and glory. He has felt God’s love. It is better to him than life. Only God can satisfy him. David chooses to sing and to praise God, even while he is in the desert alone, isolated and hunted.

In verses 6 through 9, David remembers God and his protection at night on his bed, whatever that bed might have been when sleeping outdoors. The night, in the darkness, is when he felt the most vulnerable and unprotected. In the night is when the fears came. But he turned his mind to God and found peace in his memories of how God had helped him in the midst of his troubles. God’s right hand is the power that will assist him in overcoming his enemy.

At the end of the psalm, in verses 9 to 12, David is fully aware that he has an enemy who wants to kill him. But he stays confident in the moral providence of the love and power of God. The enemy is intent on destroying David, but they will meet their own violent end.

The situation of this psalm is a conflict that has been forced upon him, and it will be resolved only by one person being victorious, and one person getting defeated.

David rejoices in God, He seeks God’s help in this situation. He desires God’s presence in the crisis and remembers the clear experience of God’s power and glory in the sanctuary. God doesn’t change. He had previously satisfied David’s longing soul, and would surely do so now. He will still reveal his power, glory, and love–even in the desert–and will receive praise for it.

The whole psalter is a prayer book–or rather–a soul book that represents God and the life we can have with him. The psalms embrace the wide experience and insight of the community of faith. So we have a great variety of hymns of praise, lament, and thanksgiving, songs that recall God’s active presence in Israel’s history, songs rooted in prophetic wisdom teaching, songs of repentance and trust, songs about God’s rule, and songs of longing and hope and irrepressible joy. Martin Luther calls the psalms the “Bible in miniature.” That’s why he advises praying all of them.

The psalms change us. They form our character as we allow them to sink deep into our hearts.

When you are in those exposed, fearful places like David was, what do you do? Do you meditate on God and remember your experiences of his power and glory? Do you praise him or long for him? Or do you let your fears get the best of you and succumb to blame or feelings of worthlessness that make you want to give up?

We learn from David right away in verse one to claim God as our own. You, God, are my God. Earnestly I seek you. The thirst for God is really where our devotion to God and our confidence in him starts. We have to want what he has to offer. We have to decide that he is worth the pursuit.

And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5:5

As a hospital chaplain, I find that the subject of hope surfaces in every conversation. People express hope about test results, about going back home, about their family, and about recovery. Hope sits at the bedside of Hospice patients, both those with faith, and those without. Hope colors the imagination, and it makes painful journeys bearable. Everyone places their hope in someone, or in something. The attitude of hope is consistent across all types and classes of people regardless of faith backgrounds or depths of suffering. We all hope. We all look forward to something good.

The motivation of hope is our current condition. If we were perfect, living in paradise with no pain, worry, or separation from those we love, we wouldn’t feel the need to look forward to something better because we already have it. Why hope for a good outcome when our situation is already the best it can possibly be?

How many of us can say our lives are perfect, and all of our problems are resolved? Probably none of us. How many of us are living in hope today? How many of us live with pain or loneliness or an unknown future?

Hope implies that how things are right now aren’t what they should be. There’s a gap between our current experience of reality and what God has designed. We are made aware of this gap all the time. Scripture says we are made to live forever, and yet we deal with aging, weakening bodies that seem to drag us down instead of lift us up.

We see extreme weather conditions, the destruction of tornadoes, floods, and fires. And yet we know that creation is God’s He made it and designed it to work in a balanced order. We see the gap in relationships too. We know we are all made in God’s image, loved and valued by him. And yet we see conflict, envy, strife, and violence.

We could blame this gap between reality and wholeness on sin, and that is partially true. But none of us are doing anything on purpose to make our lives harder. In those moments when we are facing crisis and uncertainty, our minds are more focused on disruption than they are on sin. We can be going along just fine enjoying reasonable health, doing what we like with a measure if independence. And then, for whatever reason, something happens to interrupt our lives and introduce all sorts of mayhem into it. This is disruption, when things no longer go smoothly. At these times, we find ourselves in a place where we need something or someone to pull us through.

By default, hope kicks in. If we’ve done the work of building a relationship with God, then our hope is in him. He is the one who pulls us through disruption. This new chaos and pain in our lives might be temporary, so that after it’s over we can return to our regular state.

Or, it might not. The disruption may launch a person on a whole new journey, and it might be one filled with real struggles and suffering. What motivates us to have patience, or to see the good, or to expect God’s care and his love? Romans 5 shows us that hope does. Hope in God pulls us through disruption.

When talking of foundations to our hope, Paul mentions four of them in this passage. The first one is our suffering. We wouldn’t expect that necessarily, but suffering has a direct contribution to hope. The second one is God’s magnanimous love. I use that long word to help us imagine how big, kind, and generous God’s love is. The third foundation is Christ’s sacrifice. Jesus’ death is expression of God’s big love, and it accomplishes something very important and permanent for us. The last one is the glory we will share with God someday.

At that time, the gap between reality as we experience it, and God’s intended design will no longer exist. God will close it at the end of time when all is made right and his glory is fully revealed. Suffering is temporary but valuable. It works for us so much strength of character and it grows our hope. Hope does not disappoint. We can live each day in full confidence that we are justified, we are at peace with God, and we have gained access to God’s grace by our faith in him.

Lord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry. Psalm 88:1, 2

The author of Psalm 88 is a courageous person because he is so honest. He gives us a glimpse of exactly how we should behave in the darkness. A shallow person skimming along on the culture’s popular view of how to cope with suffering is unable to talk to God the way this person does. The psalmist has confidence in God to handle the depths of his agony and the strength of his emotions.

He shows us how to interact with God during the dark times. Right away in verse 1, he declares what he has always known, that God is the one who saves him. Instead of dwelling on his inadequate humanity to meet the challenges posed to him in suffering, he turns to God, the source of hope, as the one who will sustain him and help him endure.

Declaring the truth about who God is puts restraints on our sorrow. Remembering these truths helps us keep our perspective. Without God, we would fall into despair, and we would get swallowed up in the abyss of our own hopelessness. But with him, we have a place to lean and someone to share our pain with us when the road gets too hard.

When life and health and relationships and even our sense of God’s love for us falls apart, we must rely on the memories we have of who God is. And then we must follow the psalmist’s example. Cry out to God over and over again. Remind him of what he is really like. Tell him of the ways he has loved you and been faithful to you in the past.

Be as honest with him as you possibly can. Ask him why he rejects you. Ask him why he hides his face from you. Tell him about your suffering and about how you feel. God can take it. Because if you remember, he’s been there. In the form of Jesus, he has hung on a cross in pain and alone. Like the psalmist in verse 14, Jesus, too, asked, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God’s wrath swept over him too. On the day he was laid in the grave, Jesus lost his life, his friends, his neighbors, his sense of connection to God. He experienced the darkest of the dark for you.

With the words “darkness is my closest friend,” this psalm ends unresolved. The psalmist is just sitting here in the dark suffering. He knows who God is but he has given up looking for the light, expecting it to ever shine again.

As we sit here with the psalmist in this place, let’s turn to the New Testament and take a look at these words from Paul in Romans 8:17-18. “Now if we are children then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

2 Corinthians 4:17 says, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

I Peter 4:12-13 also carries the theme of glory. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.”

According to Christian theology, the ultimate purpose of life is to glorify God. This means that the first purpose for our suffering is the glory of God. When we follow the psalmist’s example of a faithful response to suffering, we are ultimately placing all of our trust in God with nothing held back. We can’t see him or feel him but we trust him. When we do this. We treat him as glorious, as infinitely beyond us in goodness and wisdom.

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” John 4:15

Have you ever been in a meeting with a group of people, and the topic you wanted to talk about never gets brought up? Instead, the other people keep sidestepping it by talking about everything else. You have certain questions you need answered or problems that need solutions. But instead of getting any work done, the group talks about food or the weather or the latest controversies in the news.

That is how reading this dialogue between Jesus and the woman at the well feels. As readers, we know who Jesus is, and we want to see this scene explode with his marvelous glory. But what really happens is a conversation with a woman who would rather talk about anything else than what Jesus wants to talk about. She tries to throw him off track by bringing up a controversial and somewhat political matter. She is also striving to find safe, neutral ground rather than letting Jesus take the lead.

Jesus doesn’t try to get the conversation back on track but uses the opportunity to teach her about who he is. Eventually, the woman starts to catch on and she says, “When the Messiah comes, he will explain everything to us.” Jesus then reveals his true identity by saying, “I am he.” This means, “I Am is the one speaking to you.” It’s the term God uses for himself when speaking to Moses from the burning bush. “I Am.”

“Give me this water so I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here,” the woman requests of Jesus. She is thinking of the household task of drawing water every day. Jesus is thinking of the deeper matters in her life that had isolated her in the first place so that she must come to the well at a time when no one else did.

She doesn’t want to talk about the inappropriate relationships. They are too disappointing and too shameful. It was much safer to keep the conversation on the well. But Jesus wants her to understand that the water he offers her will heal her of everything that happened in her past. She must first come to terms with who he is, then agree with him about the truth of her life, otherwise called repentance. When we agree with God about the things we’ve done and the choices we’ve made, we can see our lives for what they really are and then take the steps to make changes. Then, like the woman at the well, we can be free from sin. The river of cleansing that Jesus offers will flow into us as soon as we start to confess.

In this disjointed conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus seizes the opportunity to talk about the nature of God and of the worship he deserves. True worship, according to Jesus, is defined by our relationship to God. We adore a person, not a philosophy or idol set up in his place. We express praise, gratitude, and love to a real, live person.

The twists and turns of this dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman cover a lot of ground. How do the topics of life-giving water, repentance, and worship relate? It begins with the presence of God. He appeared that day in Samaria, near Mount Gerizim, in the form of the human Jesus. He invited a woman into conversation with the goal of helping her see her life accurately so that she might make changes. When the repentance and confession was completed, she was then released from sin and able to worship God in a proper way.

The presence of God invites repentance which in turn invites worship. We see what God has done for us and then our hearts respond with outpourings of love and gratitude. This happened in the woman’s life when she left her water jar and went back to town to invite her neighbors to come and see Jesus. She took action as a result of having been in God’s presence.

We can follow the same pattern in our own lives. At some point, we encounter the presence of God because he is searching for us, the lost sheep. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” Romans says. Then God helps us see, by the gentle power of the Holy Spirit, what our lives are really like. We make changes by confessing and allowing him to wash us clean. We are released from sin and free to take action, to move in faith as a result of being in God’s presence. This can happen when we first become a Christian, and also every day of our lives as we grow in relationship with him, praising, serving, and loving him with our worship.

“Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14

The larger story this verse comes from takes place around a well. John uses this physical well where water is drawn from to show us something really important about Jesus. In the Old Testament, wells provided water as a source of sustenance in the dry desert. They have been places of meeting, and of offering the relief of community and emotional connection. Wells also act as places of rescue for travelers and for animals. The safety of the water felt like an oasis in the desert. It quenched thirst and gave renewed strength.

The Israelite community was familiar with the stories of their patriarchs involving wells. In Abraham’s day, Sarah’s runaway slave girl is met by the angel of the Lord at a well. Later on, Abraham sent his trusted servant on a journey to select a wife for Isaac. He meets Rebekah when she waters his animals with a drink from a well. In the next generation, Jacob is fleeing for his life and arrives at a well where he meets Rachel and waters her flock of sheep. Years later, Moses flees Egypt and arrives at a well in Midian where he meets his future wife and waters the flock of her and her sisters.

Based on these stories, we could make the case that wells were romantic from all the matchmaking done around them. While that may be true, the Bible wants us to see that wells were a place of relationship and community building.

Jesus knew the heritage surrounding wells, so it is no surprise that he would turn up at Jacob’s well at some point during his time on earth. He comes at midday to a small Samaritan village. He knew what would happen, and he knew who he would encounter. John wants us to understand that Jesus is a well himself, of the very things the physical well provided. He is sustenance in the wilderness, a source of deep and satisfying relationship, and the rescuer from desperate thirst. That day in Samaria, he knew a weary traveler along a lifelong road of parched hopes and the fine dust of futile pursuits would come here to draw water. Jesus settles discreetly on the side of the well and waits.

The source of living water has come to the source of the town’s well water, and now this unsuspecting woman will get the chance to draw water from the well she has always longed for. She gets hung up on his ethnicity, his lack of utensil with which to draw water, and the local history that entitled her to use this well. But Jesus invites her into something else completely. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”

Living water was water that flowed. It had a source, a direction, and a destination. It was of better quality, purer and clearer, than the stagnant waters of a pond or cistern.

Jesus offers living water that cleanses and frees. He offers to the Samaritan woman a new life. It is one connected with the activity of the Holy Spirit. If she accepted this water and drank from it, this living water would flow within her too. It would be a spring welling up of its own accord from a source beyond her. Always fresh. Always abundant.

Jeremiah describes God as the spring of living water, and John uses a similar phrase in chapter seven when he quotes Jesus. “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whomever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

To come to Jesus and drink is to believe. To come to Jesus and drink is to long for cleansing. To come to Jesus and drink is to accept the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus gives the invitation for the thirsty soul to come to him and drink. He is the only one who satisfies our thirst. We don’t have to look anywhere else for the answers to the longings that ache deep inside us. Everyone who drinks the water he gives them will never thirst.