There is a little girl who eagerly awaits the sound of the garage door each day. Each day she bids her father goodbye as he goes off to work, and each evening the sound of the garage door heralds his return. She jumps up from what she is doing and runs to the door and throws her arms around her father crying “Daddy! Daddy!” He reaches out and embraces his daughter and holds her tight. This is the best part of her day, she says. She has eagerly sought her father and delights in his presence.

Her father also eagerly awaits the end of the day, when he can embrace his daughter, and when he can greet his wife—his soul mate and the love of his life, the one who knows him better than others, the one who helps to bring contentment to his life. Separated after a long day, they eagerly seek each other and delight in each other’s presence.

Each of us knows relationships like this—family or often close friends who bring deep value to our lives. We call these friends soul mates—friends who know us sometimes better than we know ourselves. These soul mates are friends that we can trust to care for us or speak the truth to us, even if the truth is challenging. We delight in the presence of a soul mate and we eagerly seek them out, and thirst for them when they are absent from us.

In truth, even the closest relationships can go through periods of absence, or periods of dryness or drift. Every friendship and marriage and family relationship goes through ruts where the relationship is not as fruitful, or where we feel somehow disconnected from each other. Usually, when we finally take notice of this distance, we eagerly seek each other and we make the effort to renew that relationship that feeds the soul so well.

The same is true for our relationship with God. Though we don’t talk about it all the time, each person goes through ruts in their spiritual life, periods of dryness or a sense of distance from God. Perhaps we’ve been distracted by other parts of our busy lives—college, friends, a new family or job or a new home. Perhaps as we learn about God, we become intimidated by this relationship. Perhaps our fears or our own insecurities or our own sense of failure keep us from God for a time. Many people have hurt or anger that is too hard to bring to God, and avoiding God is easier.

Spiritual ruts or spiritual dryness in our relationship with God is a very common experience, even and sometimes especially among those who are particularly devout. If you know the delights of God, those periods of time that feel distant from God are very challenging. The great spiritual writers that many call “the mystics” describe this experience as “the dark night of the soul.” For many of us, we experience this “dark night” as a drift that has occurred, like a boat unmoored from its pier that has drifted out to sea without our noticing until we are far from shore.

As common and nearly universal as this experience of spiritual dryness is, the experience of a thirst for God is just as common. Each of you have felt this from time to time. Many of you, it seems to me, made a connection with St. Mark’s because of that lingering curiosity—that nagging thirst that drew you to seek God so that you might find God.

This morning’s Psalm tells of this kind of experience. Psalm 63 is attributed to David, describing the time that he spent in the wilderness fleeing from king Saul who was trying to kill David. David lived with his followers in the caves of the rugged Judean wilderness, uncertain about the future or the outcome of this adventure that somehow lay between David and the throne that God intended for him. David writes “O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; * My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.”

David eagerly seeks the presence of God. He seeks God’s power and glory to uphold him in his time of need. David seeks God like that little girl waiting for her father, or her father seeking his wife—like a friend seeking a soul mate, so David eagerly seeks God.

One might wonder how David could so eagerly desire God even when God has left David with this difficult situation. God’s words to us can sometimes be challenging, as they were for Eli in this morning’s Old Testament reading, or for the Corinthian Church as we heard in the New Testament Reading. God’s first prophecy for Samuel was a message of judgment against the priest that young Samuel served. Paul confronted the Corinthians about their sexual behavior and its self-destructiveness.

The third verse in Psalm 63 seems to be a hinge verse between David’s deep thirst for God and David’s contentment despite his wilderness experience, despite the challenge he faces in his relationship with God. Verse 3 reads “For your loving-kindness is better than life itself, * my lips shall give you praise.”

You might remember learning a Hebrew word in a sermon several months ago—do you remember the word “hesed” [with a hard guttural “h”]? Hesed is here translated “loving-kindness,” but it also means “steadfast-love,” or “covenant-love” or “covenant-faithfulness.” Here, David recognizes God’s steadfast love and faithfulness to him—to David. And David declares that this steadfast-love of God is better for David than life itself. So, David declares,

So will I bless you as long as I live; * and lift up my hands in your name.

My soul is content as with marrow and fatness, * and my mouth praises you with joyful lips

When I remember you upon my bed, * and meditate on you in the night watches;

For you have been my helper, * and under the shadow of your wings I will rejoice.

Even though David is in the wilderness, yet he claims the contentment of one who has eaten a great feast. Why? Because the joy of God’s loving-kindness is the joy of being known by God and loved by God. Just as a friend desires the soul mate that knows the friend so well, so David eagerly awaits God who knows David so well.

I believe that David, like the rest of us, realizes that even when God challenges us—as when he challenged Eli or the Corinthian church—still we realize how well God knows us. God knew and called Samuel long before Samuel recognized God’s voice. Jesus called Nathanael and knew him even before Philip called him. God knows us better than we know ourselves. Like those soul mates, God knows us for all our faults and strengths and through the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ, God loves us anyway. More than that friend or soul mate, God is the one in whom we can place our ultimate trust.

Sometimes, our lives go through periods of uncertainty or restlessness. In those times, we are often drawn to seek God, because ultimately we know that the true mate of our souls is God. I have found from the experience of others and from my own experience that these periods of spiritual dryness or restless curiosity about God are signs that God is up to something. We don’t often understand what is going on, but God is indeed up to something new.

In human relationships, we have opportunities in times of dryness and ruts—we have opportunities for renewal reinvigoration. Likewise, our relationship with God can also find renewal and great life as we answer God’s call to a deeper relationship with him.

The last verse we read from Psalm 63 this morning describes the peace of this deep relationship: “My soul clings to you; * your right hand holds me fast.” This verse shows not only David’s eagerness for God, but God’s corresponding embrace and shelter, and the strength of his protection symbolized by his right hand holding him fast.

David knew this renewal and the life that it brought him. Like the soul mate separated from his friend, he eagerly sought God. Like the little girl who awaited her father, David eagerly sought God’s presence. And like the girl and her father, like her father and his wife, David embraces God, and feels the confidence and security of God’s embrace.

So shall we feel God’s joyful embrace as we renew our relationship with God—the true mate of our souls, the one our souls ultimately desire, the one in whom we can place our ultimate trust.

[Note: Psalms are Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry works in couplets (or sometimes triplets as in verse one) of “thought-rhymes.” Each phrase in a verse is and image or phrase that is paralleled by another (sometimes paralleled in contrast to the first), usually divided by an asterisk *. Thus, sometimes psalms are read responsively by half verse. There are several styles of Psalms; this one seems to run in two or three sections, with verse 3 as the hinge—a petition or complaint in the first section and a thanksgiving in the second section. Verses 9 through 11 (not read in worship this day) reflect more particularly on David’s situation in the wilderness and his specific need for God’s protection and vindication over David’s enemies.]

4