Day 482: Where is your God? - Psalm 42
1-2 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long: “Where is your God?” 4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.
5-6 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. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. 7 Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. 8 By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. 9-10 I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
11 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. Psalm 42 English Standard Version
Twice in this Psalm the writer speaks of people who continually taunted him saying “where is your God?” Events had happened which prevented him from joining those who were meeting together to worship the Lord. The result was that three times he speaks of his soul being 'cast down' inside him. Today we'd call that being discouraged or depressed. He uses a vivid picture of being like someone sitting in a gorge where waterfalls and cataracts thundered down, feeling as if God had allowed, even caused, the waters to go over his head.
This wasn't just an Old Testament experience. The apostle Peter wrote to Christians going through fiery trials and being scoffed at and mocked. In 2 Peter 3 vs 3-4 he says: “In the last days scoffers will come mocking the truth and following their own desires. They will say, “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again? From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created.” This has proved true even today. While Christians in some countries are treated with physical cruelty, Christians in the West are often mocked and rejected by atheists who've been blinded by the theory of evolution. And, as the years go by, their taunts grow stronger.
How did the Psalm writer respond? He obviously was feeling discouraged. In vs 9 he even admits that he felt as if God had forgotten him! Christians also go through such times. But in vs 1 he also poured out how much he longed to be able to meet again with those who worshipped God. In vs 7 he uses a picture of how in vast open spaces it often seems as if 'deep calls out to deep'. So the experience he was going through only made him cry out to God all the more. And, in both verses where he speaks of his soul being 'cast down', he immediately encourages himself to continue to put his hope in God, because he knows God is his saviour!
Yes, God does seem far away at times in the materialistic and hostile world we live in and we will encounter those who flatly deny God's existence. But Peter went on to remind Christians being asked where Jesus was that “the day of the Lord will come - as unexpectedly as a thief. The heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the elements themselves will disappear in fire. The earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgement.” And he adds: “You already know these things, dear friends. So be on guard. Then you will not be carried away by the errors of these wicked people and lose your own secure footing. Rather, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. All glory to him, both now and forever!” ( 2 Peter 3 vs 10, 17-18) That’s how the Psalm writer concluded as well: “Hope in God . . . for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.”