Matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers – Sunday, February 4, 2018
Longing for God’s Judgments
I needed to read this verse over a couple of times to Scriptureunderstand it. At first, I thought it was the psalmist exaggerating. (Then, I remembered that this particular psalm writer did not seem to be the exaggerating-type.) I’ll let everyone take a look and see what I mean.
My soul is consumed at all times
with longing for Your judgments.
This verse brings back to my remembrance the fact that the existing Scriptures at this time were not (as a whole) very complete. The Torah—the first five books of Moses—plus Joshua, Judges, and Job, and maybe Ruth. Probably most of 1 and 2 Samuel, maybe some of Kings, and some of the Psalms. Some of Proverbs, too? That’s it, pretty much.
Sure, some of these writings are heartwarming and positive. But, when I hear things like “longing for Your judgments,” somehow I think of things like the Mosaic Law Code. Judgments do not sound very appealing. The longings of the soul sound painful. Not like something I would seek out, willingly.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “On the contrary, it is the experience of the soul’s being consumed and destroyed by this longing that is spoken of here.” [1] This longing for God’s judgments is definitely not a warm, fuzzy feeling. From what Bonhoeffer says, one cannot get it simply by having “pious feelings.” It comes upon us “from God Himself and so must be everlasting.” [2]
However I may wish to have blithe, sunny, simplistic mountaintop experiences with the Lord, that is not what the psalmist is talking about here. This deep-seated longing is “being compelled to seek [God] where reason and experience deny Him, in knowing God’s Word as a power over our life that never lets us go, though all our powers sink into death.” [3]
Such a deep and thorough understanding and knowledge of God and God’s Word almost scares me. Certainly, it sobers me. What a thing to strive for. Dear Lord, gracious God, I would strive after such a longing and knowledge and understanding, if I dared.
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[1] Meditating on the Word, Dietrich Bonhöffer, edited by David McI. Gracie. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley Publications, 2000, 132.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
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