The Dry Season: a free devotion

Psalm 63:1

"O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water."

Devotion

The dry season is one of the most disorienting spiritual experiences a person can have — because it does not feel like crisis, exactly, but it does not feel like life either. It feels like the water has receded and you are not sure when it will return. David knew this landscape. He sat in it, in the wilderness of Judah, and he did not pretend it was something other than what it was. He named the dryness. And then he turned toward God anyway. That turn — toward God while in the dry place, without waiting for the dry place to end first — is one of the most courageous acts of faith in all of Scripture. You can make that turn today. You do not have to wait for the season to change before you seek the One who changes seasons.

Go deeper

"My soul thirsts for you"

The Holy Thirst · tsama · H6770 · HEBREW
To thirst, to be parched with longing; a deep, almost physical hunger of the soul that only God can satisfy

David wrote Psalm 63 in the wilderness of Judah — likely during one of the most dangerous periods of his life, when Absalom had driven him from the throne. He was in a literal dry place. And he mapped that external landscape onto his interior one with perfect honesty. The thirst David felt for God in the desert is not a spiritual failure — it is the soul working exactly as it was designed to: longing for the One who made it. If you are thirsty today, you have not lost your faith. You have discovered what Augustine said centuries later: our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

📖 John 4:7–14 · The Woman at the Well in the Midday Heat

She came to the well at noon — the hottest part of the day, when no one else would be there. The timing was not coincidence; it was avoidance. Five husbands and a current arrangement that wasn't marriage meant she had learned to stay out of the path of other women's eyes. She came alone to the water, thirsty in more ways than she would have named.

Jesus was sitting there. He asked her for a drink. She pointed out that Jews did not share vessels with Samaritans. He said: "If you knew who I was, you would have asked me, and I would have given you living water." She said: "You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep." She was still thinking about physical water. He was talking about something else entirely.

"Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again," Jesus said, "but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

She said: Sir, give me this water. And in that moment, the thirst she had been filling with everything else became the very thing that led her to the only One who could answer it.

"My flesh faints for you"

The Longing Body · kaphah · H3642 · HEBREW
To long with deep yearning; to be faint with desire; a craving that reaches into the physical body, not just the mind or spirit

David does not spiritualize his experience. He says his flesh — his body, his physical self — is involved in this longing for God. The dry season is not just a spiritual condition; it wears on the body, the emotions, the capacity to function. If you are in a dry season, it may be showing up as fatigue, flatness, a difficulty feeling anything. That is not weakness. That is what genuine spiritual hunger feels like in a human body. God does not ask you to transcend the physical experience. He meets you inside it.

📖 1 Kings 19:1–8 · The Prophet Who Asked to Die Under a Broom Tree

Elijah had just called down fire from heaven. He had outrun a chariot in the Spirit. And then Jezebel sent a message that she intended to kill him, and he collapsed. He ran into the wilderness — which is to say, he ran into exactly the kind of landscape David was describing — and sat under a broom tree and said: "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers."

He lay down and slept. And God did not scold him or shake him awake with a sermon. An angel touched him and said: "Arise and eat." There was bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again. The angel came a second time: "Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you."

God's first response to the prophet's collapse was not a theology lesson. It was bread. It was water. It was sleep. The spiritual renewal came only after the physical needs had been met — because God made humans as whole beings whose bodies and souls are not as separate as we sometimes pretend.

"A dry and weary land where there is no water"

The Desert Season · tsiyah · H6723 · HEBREW
Dryness, aridity, a waterless waste — the condition of a land, or a soul, stripped of what usually sustains it

David names the landscape of his soul directly: dry, weary, waterless. There is something important in that honesty. Naming the dry season for what it is — not sugarcoating it, not performing fine-ness — is the beginning of finding water in it. The wilderness is not a place where God is absent. Moses met God in the wilderness. Elijah was fed in the wilderness. Jesus was tested and proven in the wilderness. The dry place is often where God speaks most clearly — because there is less noise to compete with.

📖 Hosea 2:14–15 · The Desert Where God Speaks Tenderly

Hosea is a book of extraordinary pain — a prophet commanded to live the metaphor of God's covenant love for an unfaithful people. But in the middle of the pain, God speaks a surprising word: "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her."

Not in the city. Not in the temple. Not in the prosperity seasons. In the wilderness. The dry place, the stripped place, the place of no water — that is where God says He will speak tenderly. And then: "And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope."

The Valley of Achor — literally "the valley of trouble" — becomes a door of hope. The dry place becomes the vineyard. The wilderness becomes the place of speaking. God does not rescue people out of the desert and then speak to them. He enters the desert and speaks there.

Declarations

✦ Even in the dry season, my soul knows where to go — and I choose to seek God there. (Psalm 63:1)
✦ God is not absent in the wilderness; He speaks more tenderly there than anywhere else. (Hosea 2:14)
✦ I will wait on the LORD and my strength will be renewed — I will not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)
✦ God is making a way in my wilderness right now, even when I cannot yet see it. (Isaiah 43:19)

Prayer

Father, I am thirsty and I don't always know exactly what I'm thirsty for. I know the season feels dry — the prayers don't come as easily, the worship doesn't feel as alive, and I sometimes wonder if you are as close as I once believed. I choose to believe that you are. I choose to say, with David in the wilderness: you are my God, and I earnestly seek you. Meet me here, in this dry place. Speak tenderly. Let the river come. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Think about it

How long have you been in this dry season, and what do you think God might be doing in you through it that He couldn't do in the flourishing times?

I will seek God in the dry place without waiting for the season to change, trusting that He is already present and already speaking.

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