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Psalm 42:1:
1As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
Not twenty centuries and more have been able to darken the golden glow of the immortal song that has come to us in the forty-second Psalm, and, with all the bitter estrangement from God that in large circles characterizes life in our times, the praises of the priests of art even yet join heartily with the lauds of the redeemed of the Lord in giving the song of the "hart that panteth after the water-brooks" a place far above all other lyrics in which the home-sickness of our human heart cries after the Source of our life.
What here grips so mightily is the ardent fervor that breathes throughout this whole psalm, the passionate outpouring of soul that makes this glorious song to expand.
To be near unto God is our most blessed experience, and in the face of distraction and temptation our soul on the point of fainting can yet turn away from the world unto God, inasmuch as a voice within whispers that he who forsakes God disturbs the peace in his own heart.
Time after time we have turned back to God, and have knocked at the door that we might be admitted again to the hidden walk with Him, after we had discovered in hours or days of wandering that worldly pleasures are vain and that worldly glory deceives.
At another time we have let ourselves, as it were, be taken along to God by one who "holy, and humble of heart" drew us to God.
Again at another time a wound inflicted in our heart, a great anxiety against which we battled, or a distress in which we almost perished, impelled us to seek help and comfort in the holy nearness of our God.
The paths along which our human heart came to God wind themselves through all of our life, and disclose themselves, however oft abandoned, every time anew.
And yet, with all this, there was no ardor. Rather in such moments our heart, if left to itself, would not have inclined toward God, and it was a pressure, an impulse, a stimulus from without, which drove the half-unwilling and self-sufficient heart out after Him.
But in this Psalm the heart itself pushes and drives. It is not from without but from the inner chamber of the heart that the home-sickness after the living God irresistibly wells upward.
It is here no accidental happening; no cause that operates from elsewhere; no bitter experience, no enticing voice from without; not the stimulus of conscience; not the urgency of need; far less, sagacity and calculation; no, here it is from nature, from the re-born nature of our heart itself that the pressure after God, the not-being-able to do without God, the impetuous hastening after the living God springs.
Even Augustine's exclamation: "My heart continues restless within me, until it rests in Thee, O, my God!" pales here in loveliness of glow.
Here it is a thirsting. A thirsting after the living God, even as the dried-up blood, after exhaustion, in man and beast does not merely call for moisture, for quenching, for water, but in agony cries out for it, so far as the parched palate still permits this crying with husky throat, this moaning with audible sound.
The imagery goes back to the animal world, where there can be no idea of reflection, or pious intention or crying from set purpose. The exhausted hart, no more able to endure its suffering, moans as in despair, because, having at last reached the stream-bed, finds that stream-bed emptied of water; and now, from the pure impulse of nature, at the point of dropping to the ground, and no longer able to go without water, breaks the air with his agonizing cry for water, water; and must presently succumb, unless water comes.
In this impulse of nature, in this passionate longing, in this ardent fervor, in this almost dying of thirst after God on the part of the soul, in this consuming homesickness after the living God, lies what exalts, what grips, what enchants, and what at the same time puts us deeply to shame.
How many have been the moments in your life, when, apart from the pressure of necessity, apart from the voice of another who invited you, or the sting of the conscience that troubled you—from a purely natural impulse of soul you have thus thirsted after the living God.
You feel, you perceive as you listen to this silvery melody, as you join with others in the singing of this glorious forty-second Psalm, that such, not sometimes but always, should be the state of your heart; that to this end God created you; that His plan concerning you includes the intention of such a glorious longing in you after Him; that you failed of the high possibility of your nature every moment that this plan ceased to be operative in you; and that you sin against grace when, at least in your re-born nature, this longing, this thirst, this home-sickness after the living God, can keep silence.
Even as blood, by dessication, calls for water, and, if the moisture does not come, ceases to circulate, so likewise you obtained a nature from God which, normal and uninjured, must cry out in your soul after Him, or collapse.
Piety which has sometimes imagined itself to be of a high order, here feels itself sink away, because it has so rarely reached that fervor, that ardent passion, that consuming home-sickness after God.
It is your holy exaltation, an illustrious evidence of your human nobility, that your nature has so been created, that so it should be, and that so it can be; but it is at the same time your deep self-humiliation, that this nobility of higher origin exhibits itself so extremely rarely in you with all the fullness of its strength.
But then it is also a stimulus which leaves you no rest, which makes you turn in upon yourself and deepen your thought, and which, under this changing impression, makes you feel the thirst after the living God, and as soon as it is felt, makes you experience, so blessedly, its quenching power, because God makes His approach to your soul.
"So panteth my soul after God! My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God!"
The word "living" is also here an image from nature.
There is water that is stagnant, is marshy and poisonous, and thereby is unfit to refresh the life-blood of man and beast. Therefore the hart does not merely pant after water, but after the water-brooks, after the fresh, leaping, rushing water that is alive.
And so also, says the Singer: "My soul pants, yea, thirsts after the living God." Not after a Creed regarding God, not after an idea of God, not after a remembrance of God, not after a Divine Majesty, that, far removed from the soul, stands over against it as a God in words or in phrases, but after God Himself, after God in His holy outpouring of strength and grace, after God Who is alive, Who in His life makes advances towards you, with His life penetrates you, and in holy exhibition of love reveals Himself to you and in you as the living God.
You feel that here all learning falls away, all dogma, all formulas, everything that is external and abstract, everything that exhausts itself in words, in order in the word to dry up and wither. It is not your idea, not your understanding, not your thinking, not your reasoning, not even your profession of faith, that here can quench the thirst.
The home-sickness goes out after God Himself, until in your soul's transport of love you feel the warmth of His Father-heart in your own heart. It is not the Name of God, but God Himself Whom your soul desires, and can not do without, God Himself in the outshining of His life; and it is this outshining of His life that must penetrate you and must be assimilated in the blood of your soul.
The Psalmist seeks this in the sanctuary. He was from Israel, and for Israel the clear, rich, full enjoyment of God's Presence was bound to Zion. It was Zion that God had chosen unto Himself, in order in this fullness to give the enjoyment of Himself to His people.
The life of the world then drew too mightily away from God. It was idol after idol that filled the world, and therefore the Presence of the Lord Jehovah was concentrated symbolically between the Cherubim on Zion.
To apply this to the congregation in the church building is to cut the nerve of the song. For though it is true, that there is much in our sanctuaries that draws us to God, and that there is much in the world and even in our homes that draws us away from the living God, yet this again would be the stimulus from without; while what this Psalm wills is the thirst in the heart itself, and panting from the blood of the soul after God.
Zion is not your prayer-cell, Zion is not your church building, it is not even godly company; what Israel found on Zion alone, and at that time symbolically, is for us, and now really, in Christ; in your King, Who is Himself God, to Whom be glory for ever and ever, Amen!
Now he who is redeemed is in this Christ, and Christ is in him. Wondrously has he been woven as a living member into the mystical Body of Christ. His re-born nature has melted together with Christ in the most intimate way, and it is in that mystical life with Christ alone that the heart that thirsts after God, drinks in the life from God.
And therefore the being near unto God, yea, the drinking in of the life of God with all the ardor, all the thirst of our soul, is not bound for us to any place, to any presence of others, to any altar or to any priest.
Every place wheresoever, can at any moment become a Zion unto us; depending on this alone, that you approach your God in Him through Whom there is access, and Who ever liveth to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25).
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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