Psalms 63:8: “My soul follow hard after you, your right hand upholds me.”

I don’t know about you but I have a hard time (that’s a pun) reconciling coincidences as just beating out the odds or as a message from God.  For instance this morning I was reading about rabbis who entered a state of devekut during prayer. That is they entered such a deep state of communion with God that they were unaware of anything going on around them.  As I continue on my journey to discover the heart of God, I am quite fascinated with the Jewish sage’s devotion to prayer as a means to achieve a oneness with God.

We talk about devoting ourselves to prayer but what does that really mean?  Two or three times a day saying: “God bless everyone, help me through this day and please make Donald Trump the next president.” Seriously, what is it for you soul to follow hard after God? I most certainly has to have something to do with prayer.

There is a record of one rabbi who would roll on the floor while praying: “I don’t want to enter the Garden of Eden, I don’t want to enter the kingdom of God, and I just want God.”   There is another account of a rabbi who would enter into such a deep prayer that he would begin to ask God to let him remain with Him forever.  One day he was in such a deep state of prayer or devekut that it frightened the family.  The son began to shake his father to cause him to stop praying but he could not do it.  The father suddenly collapsed into his son’s arms and died.  There is a record of more than one rabbi who passed from this life to the next in such a deep state of prayer or devekut that they called it the kiss of God.  I know many Christians would consider such states of prayer to be extreme.  But, using the favorite words of the prime minister of Israel Netanyahu:  “Who says.?” I find nothing in the Bible that would forbid such a state of prayer, in fact I would find much to confirm that God seeks such a state of prayer.  Frankly, I believe Enoch entered such a state of prayer, a devekut, that he too received the kiss of God.  I did meet one person who was quite honest and said: “Come on, no one can pray for hour, you run out of things to say.”

Ok, maybe there is an extreme but yet there is something in this state of prayer call devekut that makes me wonder if I am just scratching the surface with my own personal poor excuse for prayer.  So before I can say: “Who says?”  I need to first find out what the Bible says.

I am suffering a relapse of my pneumonia affliction, which just keeps hanging on causing me to miss work. My soul is quite troubled over this and when I have a troubled soul, I find myself reading the Psalms. I opened my Hebrew Bible and just randomly picked out Psalms 63. I began reading and was getting little bored as this Psalm was not really addressing my need. I was just about to move to another Psalm when I read verse 8 and there it was: Devekah nepeshi acherika. The KJV translates this as my soul follows hard after you.  Some translations render this as My soul clings to you. The word for follows hard or clings is devek. Devek simply means to cling to.  In modern Hebrew it is the word for glue.  Esoterically it means a gateway to the heart of God through holiness and sanctification. My favorite rendering, however, is a hug.  Because I have Asperger’s Syndrome, it is very hard for me to receive a hug from people.  I like hugs just as much as the next person but I am not wired to receive them.  However, I have no problem receiving hugs from God and that makes up for a lot of loneliness and depravations in the hugging department.

In the context of this Psalm David is so hungry for God that his soul has entered a state of devekut. One Jewish writer describes a prayer of devekut as not praying anything for yourself, but seeking only to bring pleasure to God.  It is a state of total humility. The Hebrew word for humility does not mean thinking little of yourself. The idea of humility in the Hebrew is to lose all sense of yourself in the presence of God.  It is in this state of humility that one enters a devekut.

My first thought, of course, is what I have been taught that to enter such a deep meditative state is dangerous, the enemy can enter.  Perhaps this is why David says that the right hand of God sustains me. The right hand of God represents God’s power.  David is saying that even if he enters a state of devekut with God and loses all sense of self, the power of God will sustain him. Then again maybe it is with the right hand that God reaches out to give that hug.

Here’s the clincher, you do not need to enter a trance like state to be in devekut.  Devekut is simply losing all sense of self. There is an old saying: “Looking out for No. 1.”  In this case that No. 1 is Aleph or God.

I have been reading a book about a woman named Hedi Bakker who appears to be living in a constant state of devekut.  She is not living in a trance, but again she is not living a normal life. You don’t establish 5,000 churches in third world nations and take care of thousands of orphans living in a trance.  But at the same time, living in a state of losing one’s sense of self, she has done some things which seem pretty foolish in the natural.  Yet, by living in this state of clinging to God, being glued to Him, in constant communion with Him, the Lord has sustained her with His right hand or His power.  She has witnessed many coincidences in her work, but she will not call them that, they are miracles to her.  Her closeness to God is what causes her to distinguish between a coincidence and a miracle.  I noticed as I enter into a devekut coincidences start to happen. When I am drawn away from God those coincidences seem to stop happening.  But when I am receiving that hug from God no chance in the world would I call events in my life coincidences but God incidences.

So as I approach my time of rest I find it is no coincidence after my time of the dark night of my soul that I am now forced by illness to spend the next few days in bed with nothing to do but let God hug me.  A great perk to having pneumonia. Who knows maybe I will receive such a hug that I may just get the kiss of God.