Directions for Filling Your Needy Soul

I don’t know if I’ve ever clarified this before, but this blog is for those who often feel unsettled and a little desperate. You even-keeled folks are welcome to join us, of course, but you may not understand.

That said, I shall now tell you how I arrived at my quiet time with the Lord yesterday feeling “unwell.” By that I mean internally restless.

“Lord, I need something here,” I prayed. It’s my usual, like the way I always order fish-n-chips at Applebee’s.

It’s a wild distress, needing something for mind and soul but not even knowing what to pray for.

That kind of distress clutches for immediate relief. It comes with a temptation to grab any distraction –cleaning, playing Duolingo on my cell phone, paying bills–anything to get my mind off my poor spirit. My poor, poor spirit.

But after looking away from my Bible two or three times and almost getting up to find something else to do, I forced my eyes back to the page. I begged the Lord to help me one more time.

There I found Psalm 65:9-13 (NIV):

You care for the land and water it;

you enrich it abundantly.

The streams of God are filled with water

to provide the people with grain,

for so you have ordained it.

You drench its furrows

and level its ridges;

you soften it with showers

and bless its crops.

You crown the year with your bounty,

and your carts overflow with abundance.

The grasslands of the desert overflow;

the hills are clothed with gladness.

The meadows are covered with flocks

and the valleys are mantled with grain;

they shout for joy and sing.

Our living room window that morning showed me a gray, cold October sky that had dropped rain and created puddles in the night. It revealed leaves turning red and yellow and orange.

Behind me was my ginormous chalkboard, from which I had just hung a wooden pumpkin a few days earlier. I had been planning to chalk a quote about harvest but hadn’t gotten to it yet.

The Lord spoke to me from David’s Psalm, where I found myself tucked in the middle of his lyrics. David sings to the Lord about the field, singing, “You level its ridges.”

My heart has furrows and ridges. Maybe that’s normal. The plow comes by and plants seed, and I watch the sky.

The dirt is dry. So dry.

Come on rain. Then the Lord drenches the furrows –a rain that soaks the earth but doesn’t stop until the ridges are leveled with water.

God softens the land. He blesses it.

And so the Lord did with my heart that day. I went to him dry and left filled with streams of water. He reminded me that it is okay to feel empty and needy, as long as I know where to go for satisfaction.

Bring your own furrows and ridges before the Lord today. Look to the heavens and nowhere else. May he crown your year with bounty. May your carts overflow with abundance. May you come to him desperate and leave singing.