Scripture Daily

Context No. 800 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 42:1-11: in context

1As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God. 2My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? 3My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?” 4These things I remember, and pour out my soul within me, how I used to go with the crowd, and led them to God’s house, with the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping a holy day. 5Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence. 6My God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from the hill Mizar. 7Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me. 8The LORD will command his loving kindness in the daytime. In the night his song shall be with me: a prayer to the God of my life. 9I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” 10As with a sword in my bones, my adversaries reproach me, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?” 11Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him, the saving help of my countenance, and my God.

Psalm 42 is the prayer of a believer in the grip of a heavy sadness, and it is honest about it. It opens with one of the most famous images of longing in the Bible: as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God; my soul thirsts for the living God. The thirst is not for relief or for better circumstances; it is for God himself, felt as absent. The psalmist's tears are his food day and night, and all the while people are needling him, where is your God now? He remembers, and it hurts to remember, how he once led the crowds up to the house of God with shouts of joy, and now here he is, drowning; deep calls to deep, and all God's waves have gone over him.

But the psalm does something in the middle of the sinking that is worth learning. Twice, and a third time in the next psalm, it stops and speaks, not to God and not to the enemies, but to itself. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. The psalmist does not simply lie there listening to his own despair as if it were the last word. He turns and addresses his own soul, and preaches hope to it, commanding it toward a God he cannot presently feel. He is honest enough to ask God, my rock, why have you forgotten me, and disciplined enough, in the same breath, to tell his own heart to keep hoping.

The psalmist did not just listen to his downcast soul; he talked back to it and told it to hope. When I am sinking, do I only listen to my despair, or do I turn and preach hope to my own heart?

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