“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.”–Psalm 42:1
I’ve always wondered about the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. First of all, why is a little girl out wandering in woods filled with bears in the first place? Where are this girl’s parents? Secondly, bears talking, eating with bowls and spoons, sitting in chairs and sleeping in beds…I guess we can let that one go because it’s a fairy tale. But thirdly, why was Baby Bear’s porridge/chair/bed just right? Don’t some people like their porridge, or any food for that matter, really hot? Don’t some people like a soft mattress or maybe need an extra firm one because of a back condition? But this story teaches us that somewhere in the middle is “just right.”
When we think about our relationships with God, is there a middle ground? We know there are hots and colds with God, but is there a “just right”?
Psalm 42 uses water imagery to describe a person’s relationship to God. The psalmist is compared to a deer thirsting for nice gently flowing stream of water (v. 1).
But all the psalmist has to drink is his tears (v. 3). The psalmist’s thirst is descriptive of feeling far from God and the nice fresh streams are not available to quench that thirst. All the psalmist can drink are the tears that represent how he feels downcast, disturbed (v. 5), in mourning, oppressed, and even forgotten by God (v. 9).
The psalmist also describes what it felt like when he remembered being with God at the temple, praising and rejoicing (v. 4). He compares his memory of being with God to a waterfall as deep calls to deep and waves and breakers swept over him (v. 6).
The psalmist’s use of water imagery connects so well to how we often feel about our spiritual lives.
Sometimes we feel like we’re in the waterfall. We can’t escape God’s presence; it just envelops us. Other times we feel far from God. We feel depressed and forgotten, and we drink the tears.
But the psalmist tells us there’s a middle ground. While we know that tears can’t sustain us, neither can the waterfall. Though we may be tempted to desire a life lived every day on the mountaintop with God, it’s unsustainable. It’s actually even kind of dangerous for a deer (to whom the psalmist is compared) to drink at a raging waterfall with waves and breakers that can sweep the deer away. Instead, the deer longs for streams of water – a middle ground, a place to find a sustaining way to quench thirst without oscillating between the waterfalls and the tears.
So maybe Baby Bear was right. Maybe there is a middle ground and a “just right” in our relationships with God. Maybe instead of going back and forth between tears and waterfalls, we should long for sustaining streams.
May you find God’s nourishing stream; may it uphold you and quench your thirst each and every day.
