Satisfaction Found in God
A. Maclaren, D. D. Psalm 63:5-6 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise you with joyful lips:… We can have as much of God as we desire. There is a quest which finds its object with absolute certainty, and which finds its object simultaneously with the quest. And Chose two things, the certainty and the immediateness with which the thirst of the soul after God passes into a satisfied fruition of the soul in God, are what are taught us here in our text; and what you and I, if we comply with the conditions, may have as our own blessed experience. There is one search about which it is true that it never fails to find; the certainty that the soul thirsting after God shall be satisfied with God results at once from His nearness to us, and His infinite willingness to give Himself, which He is only prevented from carrying into act by our obstinate refusal to open our hearts by desire, It takes all a man's indifference to keep God out of his heart, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being," and that Divine love, which Christianity teaches us to see on the throne of the universe, is but infinite longing for self-communication,. God's love is an infinite desire to give Himself. If only we open our hearts — and nothing opens them so wide as longing — He will pour in, as surely as the atmosphere streams in through every chink and cranny, as surely as if some great black rock that stands on the margin of the sea is blasted away, the waters will flood over the sands behind it. So, unless we keep God out, by not wishing Him in, in He will come. The certitude that we possess Him when we desire Him is as absolute. As swift as Marconi's wireless message across the Atlantic and its answer, so immediate is the response from Heaven to the desire from earth. What a contrast that is to all our experiences! Is there anything else about which we can say, "I am quite sure that if I want it I shall have it. I am quite sure that when I want it I have it"? Nothing! There may be wells to which a man has to go, as the Bedouin in the desert has to go, with empty water-skins, many a day's journey, and it comes to be a fight between the physical endurance of the man and the weary distance between him and the spring. Many a man's bones, and many a camel's, lie on the track to the wells, who lay down gasping and black-lipped, and died before they reached them. We all know what it is to have longing desires which have cost us many an effort, and efforts and desires have both been in vain. Is it not blessed to be sure that there is One whom to long for is immediately to possess? Then there is the other thought here, too, that when we have God we have enough. That is not true about anything else. There is always something lacking in all other satisfactions. They address themselves to sides, and angles, and faces of our complex nature; they leave all the others unsatisfied. The table that is spread in the world, at which various longings and capacities seat themselves as guests, always fails to provide for some of them, and whilst some, and those especially of the lower type, are feasting full, there sits by their side another guest, who finds nothing on the table to satisfy his hunger. But if my soul thirsts for God, my soul shall be satisfied when I get Him. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: WEB: My soul shall be satisfied as with the richest food. My mouth shall praise you with joyful lips,