Dr Paul Allen

When we are in love—especially when that love is raw and new —we count the days and hours until the time we will see our beloved again. The strange thing about this kind of longing is that it is created by someone, and it can only be solved or filled by that same person. The longing a lover feels for his beloved is what the psalmist feels in Psalm 84. His language is love language:  “How lovely is your dwelling place. . . . My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord” (emphasis added). This psalmist knows God and has been, one could say, wounded by His presence, so that the only balm is to return to that presence. He longs for it. He yearns for it. The great church father Gregory of Nazianzus described this feeling in his poem De rebus suis as knowing in his inmost being “the sharp stab of desire for the King.”   C.S. Lewis gave fine expression to this desire in his Reflections on the Psalms: “I have rather—though the expression may seem harsh to some—called this the...

It is almost too good to be true that God not only saves us from the eternal punishment we deserve for our sin, but he also satisfies us forever with himself. And this is the very joy for which we were made. God is not the cosmic killjoy many of us may have feared in our youth. Rather, he is the God who, in Christ, stretches out his arms to us, saying, “Come, all who are thirsty!” But how do we “come to the waters” day in and day out in the Christian life? How do we “eat what is good” and delight ourselves in rich food for our souls? How do I practically seek my joy in him? The answer begins with the vital truth that God gives us means. He gives us the dignity of participating in the process, of availing ourselves of the specific channels he has built for us. And he works in us to cultivate and take up various “habits of grace,” based on his revealed means of grace, in our pursuit of joy in him. The very words of God himself, through his apostles and prophets in the Scriptu...

Image via Wikipedia As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God . My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?  Psalm 42:1-2 Loving Jesus , there’s no craving more demanding than thirst . It’s neither patient nor polite. When we get thirsty, we’re usually quick to slake its unrelenting demand, one way or another. Thirst will  not  be denied. We’ll do almost anything to satisfy our thirst. Because this is true, we join the Psalmist in crying out, “Jesus, intensify our thirst  for you . Keep us panting like the deer which pants after streams of water—the unpolluted, undistilled, never-ending brooks of your bounty. Quickly drain the broken-cisterns of our own making. Don’t let us be even momentarily satisfied with any other beverage than the draft you draw, the potion you pour, the life-giving libation you  alone  can give.   If we take up King David ’s lament, ...