401. Saturday after Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.
Psalm 63, 1-7. O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live; I will lift up my hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.
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Notice how David “thirsteth for God,” and rejoices; how he is happy, and praises God in the midst of most grievous afflictions. Such psalms as this he sang in the desert, when he fled before his son Absalom. Will not you also aspire to this glorious state; that your longing for God may grow more intense, as your troubles increase, and your joy in praising him become greater, as your cross becomes more heavy? “To David every spring of human comfort had run dry; but he thirsted the more after the well of salvation. This is the true mark of God’s children. When the children of the world wander in the desert even the last remnant of longing for God dies in their soul; while the children of God thirst for him more and more in proportion to the sufferings through which he leads them. By this rule each of us may test the condition of his soul.” — “All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me” (Psalm 42, 7. 8). “Alas,” say you, “point out to me the wicket into the holy land, and give me the key which will open its gates!” If you earnestly desire to gain admittance, you are near the gate; and the Spirit, the true and faithful, shall guide you. David mentions the way when he declares his longing “to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.” If we have and use the Lord’s word and sacraments, there is no doubt that the Lord himself is here with grace and life. Had David “seen him” with his bodily eyes, do you think? No; he believed his presence, because he had the Lord’s own promise; and thus it was that he saw the Lord. That God who had brought the Israelites out of Egypt, and planted them in Canaan, and given them the law, and kept his covenant with them; him David saw in the holy of holies in the tabernacle, where it was pitch dark to the eye, and where none but the high priest was permitted to enter. Let the Holy Spirit reveal to you your sin; it is real, but cannot be seen without the light of the Spirit; and let him teach you, as he taught David, to see our Lord Jesus Christ, who is just as truly present among us in his means of grace, — Christ, who destroyed death, founded the church, preserves it unto the end, and mercifully pardons you for all your sins. Let the Spirit teach you thus to see him; then he becomes your God, glorious to you, as he is the Glorious One in fact; and the Spirit shall knit your heart more closely to him through many tribulations. — I pray and beseech you by the burning love of Jesus Christ, let nothing, nothing in all the world, keep you away; but come in, and learn to “rejoice in the shadow of the Lord’s wings!” Bring this to pass, O God, by thy Spirit, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.*
Soon shall I pass the gloomy vale,
Soon all my mortal pow’rs must fail;
O may my last expiring breath
His lovingkindness sing in death.
Then let me mount and soar away
To the bright world of endless day;
And sing, with rapture and surprise,
His lovingkindness in the skies.
* Here the head of the family says a short morning or evening prayer in his own words, and closes with the Lord’s Prayer and the Benediction. This is to be done every day. If the stanzas are not sung, they may be read in their proper place before the impromptu petition and the Lord’s Prayer.
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