DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Why are we drawn to search for God?

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? – Psalm 42:1,2

I have reverently watched deer come to the waters. They tend to come cautiously lest they make themselves vulnerable to predators. Though there is risk, still they come. They sip the waters as if the waters were rare brandy. They listen as they sip for I have seen how their ears keep vigilant. They know here at the waters they find a few more hours of life. Here by the waters … life is sustained.

The instinct appears universal for we human creatures. As we have instinct to find water, we have the instinct to find God. We begin with a most natural yearning for the presence of the Divine. It is as if we instinctually sense that our humanity remains unfulfilled until it finds it Divine completion. And so we yearn … until we are told not to yearn or we are distracted from the yearning. Yet … now and then … in moments of desperation or in moments existential or in moments of awe and wonder … we hear once more that beckoning from another Realm, that tug upon the soul to come home.

We are wise to listen for the beckoning and to be responsive to that yearning for as the deer has need to quench its thirst in order to live, we must satisfy the yearning of our souls to know that most abundant life.

Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz