Advent Devotional — Wednesday, December 12

December 12, 2007, 9:00 am; posted by
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Wednesday, December 12, 2007
“As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?”
(Psalm 42:1-2; from the Morning Psalm in The Divine Hours)

The praise chorus which was inspired by this psalm is a quiet sort of song which conjures up the pastoral scene of flowing streams and verdant meadows. Of course, to the deer, the desire for flowing streams is not a romantic longing — it is a matter of life and death. The deer needs water to survive; a self-replenishing source like a brook was life to a deer. A deer would frantically, desperately search for water just to survive, to get by. It is this image that the Psalmist uses to talk about his own thirst for God; a frantic, desperate thirst, as yet unrequited.

Advent asks us to cultivate that same thirst for God. That thirst is a difficult thing to grow. For one thing, we live in a culture that assures us God is unnecessary and quite possibly even harmful to our happiness. But for another, many Protestant churches have stressed God’s availability to us. The concept of the priesthood of all believers, for instance, has (rightly) told us that we do not need a priestly mediator to interact with God–that each of us has access to God for our own individual selves. And of course we have and treasure that access; but it is difficult to cultivate a thirst for anything that is always available — even God.

So how do we cultivate this thirst? In his providence God has given us many ways. One meaningful Advent-sort-of way is fasting, taking away the delight of a beloved food (or all food for a short period of time). When we treat that self-denial as a spiritual discipline, prayer accompanies our fasting: Lord, let me long for you in the way I’m longing for doughnuts. Our spirits are trained to desire God again; through denying ourselves smaller pleasures, we learn to associate that longing with our greater longing for God. Let me encourage you to find a way of fasting, be it through food or some other gift of God you wish to give up for a time; in it, you will learn to thirst for the living God.


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