Thirsty Like a Deer for the Stream

Have you ever cried when you used to sing?

There is a deer in the forest, and she is thirsty.
Thirsty all the way down to her hooves.
She runs over the hills with her tongue dry as a leaf,
hunting for water, hunting, hunting,
because a deer who cannot find the stream
cannot live.

That is how my soul feels, said the man who wrote this song.

He was missing God.
He used to walk to God's house with a whole crowd,
clapping, laughing, singing,
glad as a holiday.
But now he was far away.
And all day long, voices kept asking him,
"Where is your God? Where is he now?"

So his tears became his food.
Day and night, only tears.

This is a song for the days you feel far.
The days the singing dries up in your throat.
The days you wonder if God has forgotten where you are.

Then the singer does a surprising thing.
He turns around, right inside his own sadness,
and he talks to his own heart.
Like tucking himself in.

"Why are you so sad, my soul?
Why all stirred up inside?
Wait for God.
The day is coming when I will sing again."

He remembers the water.
Long before, when God's people were thirsty in the wilderness,
God split open a rock, and a stream came gushing out.
God has always known how to find water for his thirsty ones.
So even with a dry, dry tongue,
the singer remembers there is a stream,
and the stream has a name, and the name is God,
and one day, one day,
he will stand right in front of God's own face
and the thirst will be over forever.

He could only hope for that, back then.
He pressed his face toward it through the dark,
like a deer who smells the river
long before she sees it.

But you, little one, live on the far side of his waiting.

Because a long time later, God himself came down,
walking and dusty and thirsty too,
and he sat by a well in the heat of the day,
and he said the most wonderful thing.
"If you are thirsty, come to me.
I will give you living water.
Drink, and you will never be parched again,
for I will become a spring inside you,
bubbling up, and up, and up forever."

That was Jesus.
He is the stream the deer was running toward.
He is the face the sad man longed to see.

So when the singing dries up in you,
and the tears come instead,
you do not have to run the hills alone.
You can whisper to your own tired heart,
the way the songwriter did,

wait.
The water has already come for you.
Jesus is the spring, bubbling up inside you even now.
And one day he will meet you face to face,
and you will drink,
and laugh,
and sing the old glad songs again,
never, ever thirsty anymore.