Who is the one who desires life? Who loves days in order to see good? (Psa 34:12)

Psalm 34 is an acrostic, an A-Z of the life of faith, containing blessing, praise, lament, wisdom, moral instruction, eschatology, and promise: God hears us, rescues us, delivers us, redeems us. It is full of promise in the midst of instruction and petition.

Right in the middle, though, is a single question, posed in two ways: who desires life? who loves to see good? The question causes us to stop and pay attention, because the answer is by no means obvious. The question takes us (way) beyond the surrounding list of promises, praises, petitions. For it causes us to ponder the kind of person whose desires are oriented to life, to the good life, to God's life. Who is this person? What makes them tick?

It’s like the Psalm pulls us up midway: stop and think, you, the one praying this prayer, what do you really desire? what do you yearn for? Is it life, the life God offers us as gift?

Moreover, this question asks us to think about desire, about love. Why is that? Isn’t faith about obedience, doctrine, correct theology? Desires are surely too subjective, too malleable, too indeterminate - what worthwhile role could desire play in matters of faith?

Yet if this question stands out in the form of the psalm, midway in the acrostic, maybe we have it back to front. Maybe desire is the main game and everything else flows from that. Maybe the Psalm is saying: orientate your heart to God, to God’s life, to the good of creation, and then live out of that orientation. Maybe all the promises and petitions make sense once we answer this question first.

Who knows? And then again, who desires life?

A prayer -- Dear Lord, may there always be a question lurking in the middle of our prayers, in the midst of our neat and tidy A-Z of faith, a question that unsettles and casts our imaginations further afield. Shape not just our thoughts and dreams, Lord, shape our desires and longings, that we may yearn for the life you offer us all. Amen.

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