Panting for God?

As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.

Psalm 42:1

This was the favorite scripture of a courageous young man who died at age 23 from a relentless brain tumor. I watched this journey up close as his body began to fail him, but his faith was resolute--even growing. In my early twenties myself, I had much to learn about facing such limitations as the inability to walk, then later, to speak. But his eyes--as long as they could see-- fairly glistened with with a life-energy and joy in the midst of intense suffering. 

I had never seen anything like it. I still think of his profound influence.

While hearing and vision remained, he desired to hear from the Scriptures. Yes, at twenty three. A young man, yet his Bible was dog-eared and marked like that of an old sage. Even the Old Testament, I remember. So I'd read through the Psalms, always starting with 42:

As a deer pants for flowing streams,

so pants my soul for you, O God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

And I believed it was true. Yearning for the Presence of God, intensely.

I'd continue...

When shall I come and appear before God?

3 My tears have been my food day and night,

while they say to me all the day long,

“Where is your God?”

4 These things I remember,

as I pour out my soul:

how I would go with the throng

and lead them in procession to the house of God

with glad shouts and songs of praise,

a multitude keeping festival.

5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my salvation 6 and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;

therefore I remember you

from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,

from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep calls to deep

at the roar of your waterfalls;

all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.

8 By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,

and at night his song is with me,

a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I say to God, my rock:

“Why have you forgotten me?

Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”

10 As with a deadly wound in my bones,

my adversaries taunt me,

while they say to me all the day long,

“Where is your God?”

11 Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my salvation and my God.

His was not a faith of posturing, of seeming to pray without ceasing so as to appease God into miraculous healing of this inoperable brain tumor. He was not making a deal with God, not pretending to be worthy while pleading for a cure. He was living out his months and weeks with whatever life and breath was left and uttered praise when physically possible.

Nope, never seen anything like this before.

While the wisdom of Scripture was paramount,  the wisdom from another source was a favorite second. Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches was a favorite book, and in it the author brought to light the human condition in a way I have always loved myself. He gave me his copy, and I have kept it quite visible in the decades since. It acts as a prompt to a remember the things and people who matter and to seek after things that will last.

This young friend died 21 years ago this month, but a legacy of faithfulness in the face of great pain and loss survives. 

May we, too, leave something worth remembering.

With thanks to friend Carla Parris for sharing photo above from The Great Smoky Mountains this summer.