NOTES for Psa 63

Life without God resembles a parched desert. The desert where many of the events described in the Bible took place and where the words of the psalm were composed vividly conveys what happens in the soul of a person cut off from the Source of life and the Giver of living water. Not only the soul but also the flesh languishes in one who is cut off from true being. This is not merely a poetic image, but an expression of the important biblical truth about the significance of our bodies and the proper way to treat them. Our bodies were not given to us by the Creator by accident; they are not the prison of the soul, and in our bodies we too can glorify Him.

For the psalmist, the Lord's mercy is more precious than life. To some, these words may seem like a beautiful phrase, a rhetorical device detached from reality. Yet the bitter experience of many generations has shown time and again that life apart from the Lord becomes a slow dying.