By: Deborah Voss
Psalm 42
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
These things I remember, as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help 6 and my God.
My soul is cast down within me; therefore, I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?”
As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
Of all the marvelous stories in the Bible, what calls to me when I sit down to read them are the Psalms. In this time when everything feels upside down and inside out and I feel like I went down the rabbit hole and entered the Mad Hatter’s world, it brings me comfort to know that this state of confusion is universal and timeless. That for every feeling—anger, betrayal, longing, sorrow, delight, joy, hope, despair—all of the feelings of the human condition—there is a Psalm: Psalms of lament—from selfish self-interest to self-loathing and everything in between; Psalms of wisdom which point to a way of living that brings peace; Psalms of Praise and Joy and Thanksgiving when the heart bursts full of gratitude and awe; and perhaps my personal favorites right now, Psalms of deliverance from persecution and evil.
The Psalms remind me that humanity has had a love/hate relationship with God from the beginning of time. The urge to blame God, or to ask God to intervene on our behalf, or to ask for protection or healing or understanding or direction or help of any kind, is as old as the Bible its self. If, like me, you sometimes want to skip the parts that ask for burning coals to be dumped on the enemy of the Psalmist, perhaps instead we should ask why reading that makes us so uncomfortable, for it is repeated over and over in one form or another in the Psalms.
The Psalms show us that our prayers don’t have to be nice and politically correct. Sometimes what we need is a great purging of feelings that rise up and overwhelm us. We don’t have to be careful with God—God can take all of it and afterward anoint us with the blessing of emptiness that we can then fill with gratitude and peace.
And that jubilant “Thank you, God!” that slips out involuntarily with joy-filled tears when life gifts us with an awe-filled moment—that is our Psalm of Praise! And the weight of that reflexive heart-felt prayer of thanksgiving balances out all of our laments. The knowledge that we live in the amalgamation of lament and thanksgiving brings the wisdom of peace—the knowledge that God is God and we can rest in that knowledge.
There is a scripture that is on the wall above my desk in my office. It is from Psalm 46:10: Be still and know that I am God. This is where I rest my weary bones, my overwrought mind, my distressed heart. When the worries of the world overwhelm me, I read these words and sometimes sing this hymn and I find a peace that overcomes all else.
