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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. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. (Psalm 63:1-5)

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\u201cIn a dry and parched land where there is no water.\u201d\xa0 Do you ever feel like you live in that land?\xa0 Where nothing satisfies.\xa0 Where you remain unsleepingly restless: full of desire and longing but with no pursuit you can find that every really quenches it?\xa0

We can distract ourselves from this roving restlessness of desire for something with almost anything: our phone, a show, work, sport, relationships, or any number of lesser goods that beckon.\xa0 But they never quite quench the thirst.\xa0 If we\u2019re honest: in those times when we\u2019re brave enough to sit still and quiet to face ourselves for any extended period of time\u2014the restlessness is still there.

This is the heart string that psalms like this one pluck.\xa0 This is what it means to be thirsty for God. \xa0It\u2019s that ambiguous, never-satisfied restlessness that drives us or that we run from.\xa0 That\u2019s our thirst.\xa0 That\u2019s our soul craving growling at us.\xa0 And that\u2019s the reason that nothing we do with the stuff of this world ever seems to satisfy it for long.\xa0 Because it\u2019s a thirst for God.\xa0 You just can\u2019t quench it with anything else.\xa0 Not with a busy, successful life, not with games and entertainment, not with a \xa0bunch of friends, likes, or reactions.\xa0

It is God that sustains our life.\xa0 Not just practically through the provisions of food and drink, work and rest, or even the breath of life itself that God gives.\xa0 No, to say that it is God who sustains our life means more than that.\xa0 Our whole life finds its end, its purpose, its satisfaction, its fulfillment, its home, its joy, its rest in God.\xa0 \u201cYour love is better than life\u201d declares the psalmist.\xa0 To have God\u2019s love is to have more than all we could ever ask or imagine\u2014more even than having life itself.\xa0

Does that mean that all the other things aren\u2019t important?\xa0 Our relationships, our work, our enjoyment of life?\xa0 Not at all.\xa0 But everything in its proper place.\xa0 With our desires having found their proper end and fulfillment firstly in God, it actually sets us free to truly enjoy all those other things that we otherwise might only pursue as a means of escape or as a false consolation.\xa0 Said differently: with our thirst quenched by God, our body is refreshed and ready to really live.

And that living that we do after our restless desires have found their resting place in God?\xa0 It all becomes an act of worship: praising God as long as we live.\xa0 Because his love is better than life.

If you'd like to hear the musical version of this psalm I grew up with, you can search for "Better than Life" by Acappella, or find it here on spotify.

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