Psalm 63:1 A Psalm of David, [fn] when he was in the wilderness of Judah. O God, You are my God; I shall seek You [fn] earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh [fn] yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. This should actually read: A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. O God, You are my God; I shall seek You early, seek you early; My living being (all of it – mind, body, soul, etc.) thirsts for You, my flesh longs for/pines for You, In a dry and weary land without water. In Hebrew when a word is repeated it’s done to emphasis something. In this verse the word for “seek early” is repeated twice giving the word added significance. It’s not a casual looking for something. It’s a hunt, it’s serious and in depth, it’s passionate, and somewhat desperate. Seek seek. Look hard! The wilderness is any place where a person can’t support themselves. It’s where the only way to survive is for the grace of God to intervene. It’s not necessarily a desert, although it does help to see it that way. Yeshua is the living water. Imagine the Dust Bowl in the 1930′s. I’d imagine that when it rained it was glorious! People would probably want to dance in the streets instead of hiding inside. Water was desperately needed to grow food. Water gives life, and without it, we can’t live very long (I think it’s three days that a person can go without water). Skip describes the wilderness like this [1]: The wilderness is a very important piece of geography in the Bible. We think of it as the place of the temptations. That makes it Jesus’ problem; one which he, being God, overcame. But if we think of the wilderness only in mythical terms as some battleground between Satan and the Christ, we have robbed ourselves of a great truth. The wilderness is not the territory of Satan’s evil empire. The wilderness is God’s home. The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. The Spirit took Jesus to the place where God could be found to offer all the sustenance Jesus needed before Satan arrived at God’s doorstep. The wilderness is the place of refuge, not of battle. Why? Because the wilderness is the place where I must confront my powerlessness. When Israel left Egypt, God kept them in the wilderness for forty years. They could have marched to Canaan in a few weeks. There were much shorter routes. But they were not ready to possess the Promised Land. They had slave mentalities. God needed to reconstruct their thinking. And He did that by showing them what it is like to live in His house. Daily bread from the hand of God. No planting. No harvesting. No storage barns. Living water from rocks. No wells. No cisterns. No canteens. Victory over enemies. But no fortresses, no shock troops, no military prowess. What was it like living in God’s house? It was complete powerlessness under the authority and reign of the Lord of Hosts. It was learning the truth of “Be anxious for nothing”. For forty years God provided what life needed. Food, shelter and security. An entire generation’s worth of daily lessons. In our wildernesses, do we learn those lessons or do we sit down and give up? Do we seek seek God? Do we crave Him and His living water? Or do we become dried out husks because we refuse to go on the hunt? Have we become so accustomed to being dry that we don’t even realize how desperate our situation has become? Seek seek Him. Drink of His living water, His life-giving water. His words. [1] Moen, Skip. “Dead Ends.” Hebrew Word Study | Skip Moen . N.p., 10 Sept. 2009. Web. 30 May 2010. <http://skipmoen.com/2009/07/10/dead-ends/>.