The Psalmist, by the magic might of his desire, changes, as in a sudden
transformation scene in a theatre, all the dreariness about him. One
moment it is a 'dry and barren land where no water is'; the next moment
a flash of verdure has come over the yellow sand, and the ghastly
silence is broken by the song of merry birds. The one moment he is
hungering there in the desert; the next, he sees spread before him a
table in the wilderness, and his soul is 'satisfied as with marrow and
with fatness,' and his mouth praises God, whom he possesses, who has
come unto him swift, immediate, in full response to his cry. Now, all
that is but a picturesque way of putting a very plain truth, which we
should all be the happier and better if we believed and lived by, that
we can have as much of God as we desire, and that what we have of Him
will be enough.
We can have as much of God as we desire. There is a quest which finds
its object with absolute certainty, and which finds its object
simultaneously with the quest. And these two things, the certainty and
the immediateness with which the thirst of the soul after God passes
into a satisfied fruition of the soul in God, are what are taught us
here in our text; and what you and I, if we comply with the conditions,
may have as our own blessed experience. There is one search about which
it is true that it never fails to find. The certainty that the soul
thirsting after God shall be satisfied with God results at once from His
nearness to us, and His infinite willingness to give Himself, which He
is only prevented from carrying into act by our obstinate refusal to
open our hearts by desire. It takes all a man's indifference to keep God
out of his heart, 'for in Him we live, and move, and have our being,'
and that divine love, which Christianity teaches us to see on the throne
of the universe, is but infinite longing for self-communication. That is
the definition of true love always, and they fearfully mistake its
essence, and take the lower and spurious forms of it for the higher and
nobler, who think of love as being what, alas! it often is, in our
imperfect lives, a fierce desire to have for our very own the thing or
person beloved. But that is a second-rate kind of love. God's love is an
infinite desire to give Himself. If only we open our hearts--and nothing
opens them so wide as longing--He will pour in, as surely as the
atmosphere streams in through every chink and cranny, as surely as if
some great black rock that stands on the margin of the sea is blasted
away, the waters will flood over the sands behind it. So unless we keep
God out, by not wishing Him in, in He will come.
The certitude that we possess Him when we desire Him is as absolute. As
swift as Marconi's wireless message across the Atlantic and its answer;
so immediate is the response from Heaven to the desire from earth. What
a contrast that is to all our experiences! Is there anything else about
which we can say 'I am quite sure that if I want it I shall have it. I
am quite sure that when I want it I have it'? Nothing! There may be
wells to which a man has to go, as the Bedouin in the desert has to go,
with empty water-skins, many a day's journey, and it comes to be a fight
between the physical endurance of the man and the weary distance between
him and the spring. Many a man's bones, and many a camel's, lie on the
track to the wells, who lay down gasping and black-lipped, and died
before they reached them. We all know what it is to have longing desires
which have cost us many an effort, and efforts and desires have both
been in vain. Is it not blessed to be sure that there is One whom to
long for is immediately to possess?
Then there is the other thought here, too, that when we have God we have
enough. That is not true about anything else. God forbid that one should
depreciate the wise adaptation of earthly goods to human needs which
runs all through every life! but all that recognised, still we come back
to this, that there is nothing here, nothing except God Himself, that
will fill all the corners of a human heart. There is always something
lacking in all other satisfactions. They address themselves to sides,
and angles, and facets of our complex nature; they leave all the others
unsatisfied. The table that is spread in the world, at which, if I might
use so violent a figure, our various longings and capacities seat
themselves as guests, always fails to provide for some of them, and
whilst some, and those especially of the lower type, are feasting full,
there sits by their side another guest, who finds nothing on the table
to satisfy his hunger. But if my soul thirsts for God, my soul will be
satisfied when I get Him. The prophet Isaiah modifies this figure in the
great word of invitation which pealed out from him, where he says, 'Ho!
everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.' But that figure is not
enough for him, that metaphor, blessed as it is, does not exhaust the
facts; and so he goes on, 'yea, come, buy wine'--and that is not enough
for him, that does not exhaust the facts, therefore he adds, 'and milk.'
Water, wine, and milk; all forms of the draughts that slake the thirsts
of humanity, are found in God Himself, and he who has Him needs seek
nowhere besides.