Love Songs
Tuesday (November 11)
Love Songs
Psalm 63:1
O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
If we happened to stumble across this scroll of Psalm 63:1 in a dusty jar in the back of a dusty cave, we’d think these lyrics were penned by a Romeo-type character. On its face, it reads like the sort of Shakespearian, overly dramatic line that most red-blooded guys would balk at. I mean no disrespect by this at all, but doesn’t this verse sound like the sort of thing a typical fourteen-year-old girl might write in her diary about the boy she’s fallen head over heels for? Yet, that’s the amazing thing, friend. The same hands that penned these over-the-top, soft, rosy words are anything but soft and rosy. In fact, they’ve got callouses from holding a sling and shepherding sheep and killing giants and fighting lions and destroying Philistines. This poem wasn’t written at a windowsill by some lonely Repunzal waiting for Prince Charming to show up; it was written in a desolate wilderness by the manliest of men. Think about that for a moment. David is an old-fashioned man’s man, isn’t he? The kind from ages past. The dirt-on- the-collar pioneering type who had to farm and forage and build his life with his own two hands. Fearless before his enemies and faithful to his flock—a shepherd after God’s own heart.
Yet, Almighty God doesn’t just give David the gift of slinging stones and leading armies. He gives him the gift of poetry. And David is just as deft and enthusiastic in his psalm-slinging as he is his stone slinging. He’s all in. He prays and sings and dances with exactly the same unbridled vigor and energy that he fights lions and bears and Goliaths. He wears his entire heart on his sleeve not because he doesn’t have control of his emotions but because God is worthy of his whole heart. Are his words a bit sappy? No question. Are they over-the-top, perhaps? Absolutely. But are they the sort of authentic cry from a yearning heart that God delights to hear? Don’t ever forget it!
I wonder, friend: when was the last time you sang a love song to God like that?