I'm brand new at this blog thing. As I begin the sabbatical, I am still trying to figure out what I will post on the blog. I don't have a set understanding, but think it may be bits and pieces, a quote, a picture and will just trust that this will work out. As I begin the sabbatical, I keep running across this verse:

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)

God is clearly compared here to water: water that renews, refreshes, quenches thirst. Like St. Augustine who said that we are restless until we rest in God, the psalmist imagines that we are thirsty and only God can quench our thirst. Here, at the beginning, the psalmist laments that thirst and the dryness that comes from being away from God. Yet, later in the psalm the psalmist remembers the crashing cataracts of God's steadfast presence (42:8). This psalm provokes all sorts of images in my mind: thirst, God's quenching presence, God's overflowing steadfastness, the way that life makes us thirsty, etc. It speaks I think so well to the movements of life, from thirst to flood, from anxiety to renewal, etc.