Psalm 62 (LXX), 63 (Hebrew), speaks of David’s longing for God in the wilderness of Judah, and is one of the most perfect psalms upon which to meditate when we are in a dry period. The psalm begins with seeking God, and ends in rejoicing in God. It puts before us the pattern of the soul that knows where life is to be found, but remains entirely realistic, not forgetting that there is an enemy who would seek to turn us off the right path. Here is the Psalm:
O God, you are my God; early will I seek you: my soul thirsts for you; my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land, where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, to see your power and your glory.
Because your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you. Thus will I bless you while I live: I will lift up my hands in your name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the night watches.
Because you have been my help, therefore in the shadow of your wings will I rejoice. My soul follows hard after you; your right hand upholds me. But those who seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes. But the king shall rejoice in God; every one who swears by him shall glory: but the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped.
Notice the various places and times where God’s presence is to be practiced: early in the morning, as we search for him, in the desert when we are longing, in the sanctuary (where others also are searching for Him), on our beds throughout the night, and safe in the shadow of His wings, when His right hand upholds us. It is this continual remembrance of God, in seeking, thirsting, longing, joining the worship, praising, lifting up hands, remembering, and meditating, that will keep us safe from all enemies. Like the king—King David, or King Jesus, we will, if always remembering Him, rejoice in God, and need not fear destructive or lying mouths.
St. John Chrysostom speaks about the practicality of remembering God, and gives us this sage advice:
“For in the daytime indeed, if we do remember, other cares and troubles, entering in, drive the thought out again; but in the night it is possible to remember continually, when the soul is calm and at rest; when it is in the heaven, and under a serene sky. “The things that you say in your hearts you should grieve over on your beds,”he says. For it was indeed right to remember this throughout the day also. But inasmuch as you are always full of cares and distracted amid the things of this life, at least then remember God on your bed; at the morning dawn meditate on him.” (Chrysostom, On the Epistle to the Hebrews, 14.9)
Night, and the dark, may bring some fear for us, since we cannot see around us clearly. Yet, God gives to us this time to rest our bodies and our minds, and in the rhythm of day and night, we find time to remember what we have done, and repent before God of those things that separate us from Him. In this time of quiet reckoning comes a new reconciliation, a new healing, for God is with us. Also, the early hours of the dawn are for many excellent times for such meditation, just as the women sought Jesus in the early morning of Pascha—and got much more than they anticipated, for He was alive!
There is also a paradox built into this psalm. We may think that we are seeking Him, but He is not the one who is lost—it is us. He is always with us, as we remember in our Trisagion prayers:
O Heavenly King, O comforter, the Spirit of Truth,
Who art everywhere present and fillest all things.
And if this is true of the Spirit, it is also true of Jesus, who promised, “Behold, I am with you until the very end of the world!”
Experientially, we feel alone and deserted, but we are not. He has taken on everything that it is to be human, and He is closer than our breath. We think that we are in the desert, but really we sing under the shadow of His wings, and we are upheld by His hand. What remains to happen is for us to recognize this utter closeness. And this is something, say the fathers, that only happens when we pray unceasingly. A fifth century bishop, Philoxenos, gives us a picture of what can happen if we practice prayer constantly in this way:
“One should be secretly swallowed up in the Spirit of God, and one should clothe oneself in God at the time of prayer both outwardly and inwardly, set on fire with ardent love for him and entirely engulfed in his thoughts of God, entirely commingled in all of him, with the movements of one’s thoughts suffused with wondrous recollection of God, while the soul has gone out in love to seek him whom it loves, just as David said, “My soul has gone out after you.”
The bishop speaks to us of the calling that God has given to each and all of us to be “ecstatic”—to go OUT of ourselves—so that we can know true intimacy with Him. At the end of our Divine Liturgy, we ask the LORD, “Keep us in your holiness, that all the day we may meditate upon Your righteousness.” God’s holiness, goodness, and truth, can never be fully understood, and always present new things to us. As the Psalm says, we expect that He will be faithful, and give to us the glory that He has promised in Christ. We expect that He will be just, and not allow those who rebel against Him to continue to plague His people: best, of course, is for them to be turned around, but we are assured that they will not continue to speak lies and deceive people, for God is our protection. But there are unexpected things associated with the LORD as well—that He can use our seeming isolation and the darkness to draw us to Himself : that He will not give us simply what we deserve, but that He is moved by mercy; that as we praise Him, lifting up our hands in the name of the God-Man Jesus, He will make us more and more like Himself. He lays down for us here a godly pattern of remembrance and praise to follow, day by day, and day after morning after night. With us, He fills up our time, and draws it and us into Himself. The action, in the end, is not ours, but a response to what He has done, is doing, and will do. As the nineteenth century hymnist Jean Ingelow put it:
I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me;
It was not I that found, O Savior true;
No, I was found of Thee.
Thou didst reach forth Thy hand and mine enfold;
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea;
ʹTwas not so much that I on Thee took hold,
as Thou, dear Lord, on me.
I find, I walk, I love, but Oh, the whole
of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee!
For Thou were long beforehand with my soul—
Always, Thou lovedst me.
Edith M. Humphrey 