‘Come down of Love divine’

‘Deep in my heart there is a sigh, a longing, Lord, for Thee.’ These opening lines of a hymn by Vernon Higham echo of the heart of the writer of Psalm 42, ‘my soul thirsts for God, for the living God’ renewed in Psalm 84, ‘my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God’.  

We have been learning about God’s wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit. Like the gift of His Son, it is the gift of Himself. This gift, which we will learn more of this month, is most wonderful in every aspect. Yet it is one thing to know about the Holy Spirit, but quite another to know Him by experience. 

How can we move from the realm of knowledge to the realm of experience? Well, God loves to be longed for; He loves to be sought. He satisfies the longing soul. As Jesus said, ‘If you .. know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’  We might use the words of the hymn: 

‘Come down of Love divine,

seek thou this soul of mine,

O Comforter draw near,

Within my heart appear.’

Then, as God answers that prayer, we will find a longing for more:

‘And so the yearning strong,
with which the soul will long,
shall far out-pass the power of human telling;
for none can guess its grace,
till he become the place
wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling’.