Holy Brit

Heineken ran a series of ads in the UK a few years ago with the tag line -"Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach". You can look them up on youtube - although I think they were better when you watched them the first time around and waited for the twist in the tale.

Psalm 42 starts with the words:
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
   so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
   for the living God.

Whilst the advertising campaign claim might be a little spurious - the Psalmist recognizes both a need and a reality of communion with God which we can experience. Getting to know God better can indeed refresh parts of our being that nothing else can reach.

As a worshipping community we have to realize that many folks do not recognize what it is to thirst for God - they know there is something missing but they do not have the language of the Psalmist to say - my soul thirsts for God.

We often worry about our world and the state things are in - but what if the people around us are just thirsty - imagine the physical and non-metaphorical effects of thirst - nothing works properly in our bodies - but imagine again if we could not recognize that as a problem - in fact many people do live in a state of slight dehydration almost permanently - but imagine if you got gradually more and more thirsty without being able to recognize what was wrong and do something so simple to fix it.

We who read the words of Psalm 42 with some understanding and some eagerness to refresh ourselves in God's presence - also have a job to do. We understand the language of spiritual longing, of wanting to drink of the cup of life  - we have to make sense of that to those around us - on its most basic level. This can be a challenge, as when we talk about the basics of faith we have to talk about our experience of God - there is nothing divorced and clinical about quenching thirst - we feel ourselves coming back to life - it is an all-embracing experience.

We do not have to be clever or wordy  - we just have to allow our own relationship with God and our own trust in God's mercy to speak through our lives and the words will come, sometimes haltingly, but when you have been to the flowing stream of life, it is hard to imagine staying thirsty.






²