In these semi-retired days, I get to sleep in until 7:30 a.m.
So I don’t appreciate it when my cat decides, at 5:30 a.m. or thereabouts, that her food bowl needs replenished. I’ve tried filling up both water and food dishes at night before I retire. No dice. The cat still jumps on the bed and wakes me up. If I shoo her off or ignore her, she prances across my pillow.
So, grumbling, I fling back the covers, shuffle to the kitchen, and add food and water to her bowls. Sometimes the bowl is practically full, but that cat thinks if the bottom of the bowl is showing, it needs refilled. Sometimes I don’t add more food – I just cover the crater so the bottom doesn’t show.
Then I go back to bed until it’s time to get up. And shut the door.
One morning recently while I was stumbling, bleary-eyed, to the kitchen, I thought, “Do I hunger for God as much as my cat hungers for food?”
After I returned to bed, I lay there and thought about it.
It had been over a month since I’d had a quiet time. I was weeks behind in my Bible reading and my prayer life was practically nil, except for a few sentences I’d shoot up to heaven throughout the day.
I felt adrift in a life raft on a becalmed, foggy sea. Alone. And it was my doing.
As I sat at the window seat watching the birds at the bird feeder later that morning, a Scripture verse came to mind: “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8).
And so I did.
And He did.
A relationship with the Almighty doesn’t just happen. It must be nurtured, fed and watered daily, moment by moment, hour by hour.
Even when my cat has plenty in her bowls, she still comes to me. Maybe it’s not the food she wants as much as my attention.
Unlike me with my cat, God doesn’t grumble when I come to Him, even though my plate is full. He doesn’t treat me like I’m a bother. He doesn’t act like He has something better to do. He doesn’t shut the door when I think I’m satisfied.
He who watches over me neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121:3, 4). He’s waiting for me to come to Him, who “satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things” (Psalm 107:9).
Oh, to hunger and thirst for God!
Oh, God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. Oh, God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Three, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me the grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ Name. Amen. - A. W. Tozer, “Following Hard After God”)
Special-Tea: Read Psalm 63
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