Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: September 30th

THE HABITUAL DESIRE OF THE SOUL

So have I looked upon Thee in the sanctuary, to see Thy power and Thy glory. - Psalms 63:2

WHEN was it that David thus longed for God? In the midst of his sorrow. Even then the thing that he wanted most was not restoration to Jerusalem, or the defeat of his enemies, but union with God. Oh! that is a test of faith, one which very little of our faith could stand, that even when we are ringed about by calamities that seem to crush us, what we long for most is not the removal of the sorrow, but the presence of our Father. Good men are driven to God by the stress of tempests, and ordinary and bad men are generally driven away from Him. What does your sorrow do for you, friend? Does it make you writhe in impatience? does it make you murmur sullenly against His imposition of it? or does it make you feel that now in the stress and agony there is nothing that you can grasp and hold to but Him, and Him alone? And so in the hour of darkness and need is my prayer, in its deepest meaning, not, "Take away Thy heavy hand from me," but, "Give me more of Thyself, that Thy hand may thereby be lightened? "

I notice that this longing, though it be struck out by sorrow, is not forced upon him for the first time by sorrow. The second verse of the psalm might be more accurately rendered: "So have I gazed upon Thee in the sanctuary, to see Thy power and Thy glory." That is to say, as in the sorrows and in the wilderness he is conscious of this desire after God, so amidst the sanctities of the Tabernacle and the joyful services and sacrifices of its ritual worship, does he remember that he looked through the forms to Him that shone in them, and in them beheld His power and His glory. So the longing that springs in his heart is an old longing. He remembers that his days of sorrow are not the first days in which He has been driven to say, "Come Thou and help me." He can remember glad, peaceful moments of communion, and these are homogeneous and of a piece with his religious contemplations in his hours of sorrow.

Ah! that life is but a poor, fragmentary one which seeks God by fits and starts; and that seeking after God is but a half-hearted and partial one which is only experienced in the moments of pain and grief. It is well to cry for Him in the wilderness, but it is not well that it should only be in the wilderness in which we cry for Him. It is well when darkness and disaster teach us our need of Him; but is not well when we require the darkness and the disaster to teach us our need.

And, on the other hand, that is but a poor, fragmentary life, and that religion is but a very incomplete and insincere one, which is more productive of raptures in the sanctuary than of seeking after God in the wilderness. There are plenty of Christian people who have a great deal more consciousness of God’s presence in the idle emotions of a church or a chapel than in the strenuous efforts of daily life. Both things separately are maimed and miserable; and both must be put together - the communion in the sanctuary and the communion in the wilderness, seeking after Him in the sanctities of worship, and seeking after Him in the prose of daily life - if ever the worship of the sanctuary or the prose of daily life are to be brightened with His presence.