doe stands arrested
waiting by dry water-brook—
subdued by thirst

 

Day 5: God Alone Satisfies My Thirst

Have you ever been thirsty? I mean, really, truly thirsty—parched, scorched, dehydrated to the point that your mouth could produce no saliva, and your eyes had no tears. Your tongue felt swollen in your mouth, and your skin cracked with the slightest pressure. Have you ever known that kind of thirst? I haven’t.

Psalm 42:1  As the hart [deer; specifically, doe] pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after You, O God.

Although Israel is a beautiful country, it has often been plagued with periods of drought. We naturally tend to sympathize with the doe because she is such a delicate-looking creature. Perhaps that is why the writer of this psalm chose to write about this graceful animal. He and his readers would have seen deer and other animals longing and waiting for water to flow in the water-brooks. They are so captivated by thirst that one could almost walk right up to them before they would be distracted and run away.

The point the psalmist is making, however, is not that we need to pump water into the forests for the does, but that we ought to thirst for God as fervently as the doe thirsts for water.

When you wake up in the morning, what is the first thing on your mind? Is it the big project due that day at work? the test you have to take in school? perhaps your weekend plans?  Or do you wake up excited about getting to spend some time with the Lord? Do you jump right into your day, believing that you don’t have time for “quiet time”? Or do you hold to the conviction that you cannot face the day without God’s strength? It doesn’t take an hour or two, although if you have an hour or two each morning to spend with God, you certainly can’t go wrong. But if you do not give the Lord a chance to speak to you, then how do you expect to grow in your relationship with Him?

When I began to get serious about losing weight, one of the changes I made was I started drinking more water. At first it was hard. After all, water is tasteless and boring, right? Wrong. Drinking water actually has a flavor, given to it by the nutrients it contains. The harsh truth is that most of us cannot taste the water because our taste buds have been bombarded for so long with the stronger flavors of less healthy (or downright unhealthy) alternatives. But the more water I drank, the thirstier I became—for water.

Our strength does not come from within us; it comes from God alone. But to draw on His strength, we have to thirst for Him. We have to need Him, long after Him. We have to realize how utterly helpless we are without Him.

The more time I spend in God’s Word, the more I thirst for it. I’ve developed a taste for it, and now I know with a deep conviction that I could not live without it. Have you also found that to be true? If not, then I challenge you to begin today to spend five minutes each morning reading your Bible. Start by asking God to open your eyes to some truth He has prepared just for you for the day, then look for it. If you don’t know where to start, start in the Psalms or Proverbs. the important thing is that you start. Then let the Holy Spirit take it from there.

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For Leslie Saeta’s September 30-in-30 challenge, I am creating greeting cards, but each week I’ll experiment with a different medium and/or technique. This week’s focus is single line art, in which I attempt to draw a picture, based on one of my photos, without lifting the pen from the paper. First, I practice in my sketch book, then repeat the drawing on a blank card. Next, I add a splash of color with soft pastel, seal it all with fixative, and finish it off with a simple message typed on an old typewriter.

I got a head start on Wednesday’s drawing, knowing that the day would be busy from start to finish. I made good progress, but not good enough, for I still missed the deadline. Almost everything was done in time, but I did not wish to punch out the poem on the typewriter after my husband had gone to bed, so I saved that little detail (and the photo) for Thursday morning. No biggie.

This one is based on a photo I took in the Shenandoah Mountains in 2014, and this time I tried a more minimalist approach, based on a drawing I discovered on Instagram. I was very pleased with how it turned out, as I finally completed my first single-line drawing with virtually no back-tracing. Yay!

If you know me, you know that even attempting single line art a quite an accomplishment. I am a stickler for details. In the past, I’ve tried to make my drawings and paintings look as realistic as possible. I love to mimic real life, and the more photographic my reproduction appears, the better (in my opinion). But there is something to be said for creating art for art’s sake. A friend shared with me one day that one of her art teachers said, “If you want a realism, take a photograph; but if you want art, paint it.” Well, that may not have been his words verbatim, but I think you get the point. Art is not meant to imitate every detail of life, but merely to represent some aspect of it. And so I am trying to learn to look at my photos, find the most important elements, and convey only those parts in my single-line art drawings.

About Single Line Art

I learned this technique while clicking on the links of others in the 30-in-30 challenge this past Saturday. Amy from Water Ink & Ribbon was the artist who introduced this cool technique to me. Have you clicked over to her page yet? If not, what are you waiting for?