Psalm 73:25-26

Asaph writes this after nearly losing his footing. He had watched the wicked prosper — fat, untroubled, dying easy in their beds — and it had almost undone him, until he went into the sanctuary and saw how their story ends. What he comes away with is not a better argument. It is a different treasure. <em>Whom have I in heaven but you?</em> He turns the whole sky over, and even there, among everything a soul could want, he finds one thing worth having. Then he says the daring line: <em>there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you</em> — not because the earth holds nothing good, but because he has found the good that all the other goods were only pointing to.

It would be easy to hear this as denial, a man talking himself out of wanting things. But notice what he refuses to pretend. <em>My flesh and my heart may fail.</em> He is not promising to stay strong; he knows he will weaken, that the body gives out and the courage with it. He simply says that when the last of his own strength is spent, there is a strength that is not his — and it will still be his. A portion is not a feeling; it is an inheritance, a share set aside with our name on it. Asaph's whole discovery — and, if we will have it, ours — is that the share we were given is the Giver himself, and that no failing of flesh can reach far enough to take it back.

Edwards names what Asaph found in the sanctuary. The good things of earth are real — but they are beams, not the sun; streams, not the fountain; drops, not the ocean. That is why <em>there is nothing on earth</em> Asaph desires besides God: not because the drops are nothing, but because he has reached the sea they fell from. To have God as your portion is to hold the fountain itself, and no failing of flesh can drain it.