Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your unfailing love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation. Psalm 85:6-7
Dear Lord Jesus, it’s amazing what one really good rain can do to transform my brown, crispy yard into a garden of fresh green life. I begin this day grateful for the showers of the last couple of days. I can run my sprinkler endlessly, but there’s just something about the water that falls from the sky that brings restoration and renewal like nothing else.
Jesus, our hearts are no different. When we grow brown and crispy on the inside—when our rejoicing in you is displaced with complaining about you (and others and anything)… when our delighting in you fades into detachment from you (and from others, and eventually from our own heart)… when our love for you atrophies into fading memories of you (and then, into all kinds of hideous thoughts about you), we are powerless and shut up to your provision. There’s no hose, fire hydrant or reservoir of our own making that can even begin to make a brown heart green.
So we cry out with the Sons of Korah, “show us your unfailing love, O LORD, grant us your salvation.” Jesus, just as it was your unfailing love that first brought life to our deadness, so it will be your unfailing love that brings fresh green-ness to our current brown-ness. You have promised to “satisfy our needs in a sun-scorched land” and “strengthen our frame.” You have promised that we will be “like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” (Isaiah 58:11).
So we “sue heaven” with the promises and riches of the gospel. You’ve never lied to us, Jesus, never. You suffered the ultimate thirst of the cross that we will never thirst again. So revive us that we might rejoice in you. Restore to us the joy of your salvation for us that we might offer fresh fruit, grace-fruit to our family, friends, the community and the nations. So very Amen, we pray, in your verdant and vital name.
