"Picture Of A Deer"

As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Psalm 42:1-2

The word pants simply means,'to long for' according to the Strong's. As the deer longs for the water brooks, so my soul longs for You, O God. I get that. The longing for God. I guess the thing I've always wondered about is why the deer? Why use a deer to illustrate this attitude of longing for God. What truth, understanding, or revelation is there in there for us to grasp?

I checked my footnote and it says that the writer was exiled in the far north of Palestine and that he was writing about his desire to be able to go back and worship God at the Temple in Jerusalem. It also says that he used the figure of a deer longing for water in the midst of a prolonged drought to make his point.  Personally I think that it is more than that.

As I went to bed last night these words were on my heart, on my lips as I shared with my Father my heart to draw closer to Him each day. These are the words I awoke to this morning; "When a deer gets thirsty it is his instinct to head for the watering hole. He knows where to find water. When he is thirsty, when he longs for water, he goes to the source and drinks."

Jesus was talking to the woman at the well and he said, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life." John 4:13-14 It is time that we look to him to fill the 'thirsts' of our existence. We often look to other people,the world, or search in other places when all along, like the deer, we need to look to the source and drink of his living water.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled. Matthew 5:6
If you too are thirsty, if your soul is crying out for the living God then be like the deer. Let your first instinct be to head for the source and Be filled!