Church family,
October has finally arrived and though Texas weather is the subject of so many jokes, it is true that it really has just been so very hot. I applaud us for our resilience.
There is something fitting about that as we sit in both Ecclesiastes as a church body and Psalm 42-43 in our Bible Studies this week. The Texas heat has a way of reminding us that we are creatures who thirst. We feel it in our bodies, and, if we are honest, especially alongside life and work, we often feel it in our souls, too. Our lives can become overheated by hurry, work, worry, distraction, and the endless feeling that there is always one more thing to do.
Ecclesiastes helps us name that weariness and Psalm 42 gives it a voice:
“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.”
The thirsty soul is not finally asking for a lighter calendar, an easier week, or cooler weather. It is asking for God himself. And Psalm 43 gives us the answer we need to rehearse again and again: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him.”
This is one of the gifts we are discovering together as our Bible studies grow: learning to see Christ in all things, not only in the obviously sacred moments, but in our work and rest, our weariness and joy, our ordinary days and deepest longings.
So as October begins, let us thirst toward our life-giving God together. Come and see Christ together. Come hear his Word, sing his praises, and remember that the God who made our souls is the one who can satisfy them. One ancient prayer I’ve loved reciting in those thirsting forward moments is the Gloria Patria which says:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end. Amen.
And perhaps, even in the (hopefully ebbing) Texas heat, we will learn to recognize our thirst as an invitation: not merely to escape the heat, but to seek the One for whom our souls thirst.
The one who remains our true and living water. Amen.
