shadows and dust

Psalm 42:1, 2
"As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
 My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?"


God is my foundational need for all of life (both for my time here on earth and in all eternity), but do I live with this realization?  Do I live like I need God?  Or have I so confused my needs and desires that God just becomes another item to pack in my suitcase for the journey of life?

How easily I've become preoccupied with the delicacies this world tantalizingly offers me every waking hour!  I have tasted of this world's food.  For a moment it was sweet and filling, and then in a horrifying realization it turned to dust and made me sick.  And like a deranged dog I've found myself returning to my vomit, hoping that this time I'll at last find satisfaction.  And again I prove to myself that sin is insanity.

I don't think I'm alone in this struggle.

This world I'm passing through is the Shadowland, mere shadows of what is to come, and I am too easily seduced by its charms to recognize reality.  I snatch at its offers in order to please myself and become pathetically inebriated by vanity.

To think of my earthly desires as needs will no doubt get me into trouble here in the Shadowlands because I forget to look up.  The moment I believe that I have a need that can be fulfilled in anything but Christ I have given up my manhood.  I've committed suicide, and I am reduced to self-inflicted emotional flagellation.  The practical out-working of this poison is seen around every bend in my journey.  It's in my need to be loved, to be right, to be first, to be noticed, to be entertained, to be the exception, to be excused, to be...well, to be worshiped.  Any so-called "need" will torment my idolatrous heart.  I have starved my belly and ripped out my chest, grasping at everything and eating nothing.  It's not that I have eaten too little or too much, it is that I have eaten nothingness.  I live as an animal and nothing more.

Unless I dine in the High Countries.

It is then the shadows taste sweet as they point me to the Bread of Life, and in Him I find satisfaction.  I embody true manliness as I reflect the Imago Dei for I have realized who God has created me to be.  I worship the LORD.  I am satisfied in my Creator.  I delight in Christ.  My soul pants for God.  My soul thirsts for the living God.

I am eager to accept His invitation:


"Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money, 
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food."
Isaiah 55:1, 2