Daily Devotion

April 23, 2006

Psa 119:131  I opened my mouth, and panted: for I longed for thy commandments.

If you have never felt the pangs of intense thirst, I don’t know if you can realize the intensity of “panting”.  Panting is a term generally used for animals such as a hart, or even a dog.  

From the very beginning, man was to subdue and have dominion over the animals of the earth (Gen 1:28). Just as the animals are dominated by man and are dependant on his mercy and care, so we are dominated by God and are dependant on His mercy and care.  Compared to God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, our limited nature could almost seem like this relationship that the animals have towards man. When it came to his relationship with God, David was conscious of this great majesty of Yehovah, and he was not afraid to humiliate himself in words, by using expressions like “panting” when describing his need for his God, and by his “wild” deeds, in exhibiting a wild worship dance in front of his subjects (2 Sam 6:21,22).

This text is about panting for the Word of God, about longing for His commandments.   I think that many people are starving and panting in longing for God’s commandments, but they don’t know it.  They interpret it as needing more “amusement”*, a physical enjoyment of some sort.  Sometimes this empty feeling comes into us and we think that we need to get into a relationship, watch a movie, smoke a cigarette, take drugs, have sex, call our therapist.  The only thing that ever satisfies the human soul is a connection with his God, but man tries to fill it with all kinds of other things, so that now it pants and is starving.  

Lord, help me to know when my heart pants for you.  Help me to go to the fountains of living waters, and not to look to carnal things in order to fill it.  Even though I have waters here that can satisfy me for a moment, help me to desire the waters of eternal life.

*AMUSEMENT.  From “muse”: think; with the affix “a”: without.
Amusement literally means “away from thinking”.  People search for amusements to get away from having to think about their problems, the direction their lives are headed, and the deeper meaning of life.

Joh 4:13-14  Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:  (14)  But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.