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As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God? 


By day the Lord directs his love,
    at night his song is with me—
    a prayer to the God of my life.        (Psalm 42:1-2, 8)

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.   (1 John 4:16)

As beautiful as these words of Psalm 42 are, they really are part of a larger lament…a crying out to God during troubling circumstances.  The Psalmist speaks of crying while others questioned him about God’s whereabouts – “Where is your God?”  As the Psalmist is tempted to ponder the same question in his own mind, instead he chooses to recall the times that he would go to the temple with the wonderful sense of God’s protection and presence.  As C.S. Lewis describes it – he had an “appetite for God”.  The psalmist is never overcome by his circumstances because he knows that he can always put his “hope in God”.  Not wishful thinking but a hope born out of a very real relationship that God had invites his people into.  Although God may sometimes feel far away, he is never distant.  
When Jesus prepared his disciples for his departure and return to the Father, he assured them that his departure would not mean that he was far away.  In fact, Jesus said that it was “good that [he was] going away” (John 16:7) so that the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, would come.  Jesus invites us into a closeness with God that cannot be known except by the presence of God’s Spirit in the lives of the redeemed.  
This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.  (1 John 4:13)
This journey of faith that Jesus leads us on is one lived out in relationship with him as we learn to, like the Psalmist, “rely on the love that God has for us” (1 John 4:16).    

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit.  Teach me to rely on you in all circumstances.  When you feel far away, increase my faith.  When I feel like I have failed, will you restore me by your love. Amen.