PANTING FOR GOD
Meditations from Psalm Forty-Two for the Week of Preparation Summer Communion Season,2026-Tuesday
For the Living God
“My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:2)
The psalmist seems to love saying His name. My soul thirsteth for God. And then, as if his first words were too small for the parch, he retraces it...for the living God. He will not be religiously ambiguous. And in those words, he gives us the third day’s examination, because the great rivals of the living God are, in fact, our broken cisterns.
Jeremiah drew the picture: “they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). A fountain rises of itself. Fresh every moment, fed from depths unknown. A cistern is what man makes from clay to carry a little water in. It’s small, it contaminates, degrades and stales. And sooner or later every one of them will break. Intellect is a type of cistern for many. Better educated, higher IQ, etc. Looks, money, reputation, are gilded bright, but broken cisterns. Health, strength, the little kingdom of our plans, family, retirement: broken cisterns all. Yes, some of them are lawful to sip from. None of them able to slake a soul. The question for Tuesday night is, where have I been drinking from? A man’s thirst always knows the path to his favorite well. Trace the path of your desires, and you will find out where you’ve been drinking.
Then the second half of the verse. Here, thirst somehow turns into homesickness: when shall I come and appear before God? That is actually festive language in Hebrew. Three times in the year Israel went up to appear before the Lord on a festal day (Exodus 34:23). This man, exiled far to the north, is counting time. And he’s doing so by counting the days it would take to get there. He measures his time by distance. Let me ask you a practical question: do you love the Lord’s Day? In the early church, days were never counted by Greek god’s names (Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed…). They counted from Lord’s Day to Lord’s Day. Monday, first day after the Lord’s Day. Then two days after the Lords Day, and so on. Do you love the Lord’s Day? Does the day mark your week? Do you look forward to the means of grace? How thirsty, really, are you for Him? There’s a mark of grace worth searching for. What is the coming Sabbath to you, right now? An appointment your soul leans toward, or leans from? The psalmist could think of nothing sweeter than what we are now five days away from. Ask for this desire to be increased.
And a word for the providentially hindered, because this psalm was written by one. A few of us long for the table and cannot be sure our health, or circumstances, will allow it. Remember then, that the man who gave the church this verse, was himself providentially hindered when he wrote it. His words have helped the people of God for three thousand years. Where the feet are bound, God reads the appetite as attendance. The desire itself rises as worship, and He has never despised it.
Last of all, remember what awaits us. The living God spreads a living table, before a living church, for living life. Remember, the One set forth there in bread and wine “was dead, and is alive for evermore, and hath the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18). Living water, living bread, a living High Priest with a living intercession. Cisterns hold no such thing.
Drink accordingly.
Your friend and pastor,
J. Lewis