10 Better than life…
You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being belongs to you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water…. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.
Psalm 63: 1-3
This amazing psalm of David gives new perspective to our understanding of God’s love. Imagine for a moment that you are in the middle of a desert. Everywhere around you is dry, nothing is growing, the ground is cracked and parched. How you long for an oasis, a place to drink and quench your thirst. This is the longing to which David likens his desire for God because he knows that God’s love is greater than even his own life.
I love my life and try to live it to the full. But the questions I must ask are: Do I love God more than my life? Is my desire for God greater than my desire to live? Do I truly believe that God’s love is greater than my life? Am I prepared to give up all that my life offers – my family, my home, my job, my comforts – to seek after this great love God has for me?
Matthew tells the story of the man who discovers treasure buried in a field that led him to sell everything he owned to buy the field and claim the treasure and the merchant who sold everything he had to buy just one pearl (Matthew 13:44-45). God’s love is the greatest thing we can possess, and it is ours for free. God is not asking us to give up everything to buy his love and therein can lie our problem.
David suffered much in his life and knew what it was to have nothing, to be on the run, for his life to be at risk. I have found that it is at those times when I have struggled, been in pain, facing death that I have most earnestly sought God. How would it be if I lived each day like that? Earnestly seeking after God because I know his love is better than life?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every day we began by immersed ourselves in this love that is greater than life itself:
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
(The Love of God, Frederick Lehman, 1917)
Prayer: Lord, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being belongs to you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water…. Because your love is better than life, my lips glorify you. I lift my voice in praise to you, I give my life wholly to you.
Amen
Action: Today, thirst after God, earnestly seek him during your daily activity and let his love envelope you, fill you, wherever you are, whatever you are doing. Experience his love which is better than life.
Journal your thoughts…
