Thirsty for God: Psalm 42

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.

The image is desperate. A deer in drought—tongue out, sides heaving, frantically searching for water. Survival thirst. Life-or-death longing.

My soul pants. Not polite interest in spiritual things. Panting. Gasping. Desperate need for God himself.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

Thirst named. Not thirst for blessings or answers or help—thirst for God. The living God. The God who is actually there, not a concept or an idea. When? The question of the exiled, the separated, the one kept from worship.

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, Where is your God?

Tears for food. The psalmist is so grief-stricken that tears replace meals. And the taunt: Where is your God? The mockers assume abandonment. The absence of God seems evident.

These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.

Memory heightens pain. I used to. The processions to the temple. The shouts of joy. The festive crowd. Now gone. The soul pours out in remembered grief.

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?

Self-dialogue. The psalmist talks to his own soul. Why the downcast feeling? Why the disturbance? The question acknowledges the reality without surrendering to it.

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Self-command. Put your hope in God. The choice to hope despite feelings. And the promise: I will yet praise him. Not feeling praise now, but praise will come.

My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

Geography of exile. The Jordan region. Hermon's heights. Mount Mizar. Wherever he is, far from Jerusalem, he will remember God.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

Overwhelming imagery. The waterfalls of God—his cascading providence—call to the deeps of the soul. But the feeling is drowning. Waves. Breakers. Swept over.

Sometimes God's presence feels like drowning. The abundance is too much. The depths call to depths we didn't know we had.

By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.

Yet even in the overwhelming, there is love by day, song by night. Direction and melody. Prayer to the God of my life—not God in the abstract, but the God who is my life.

I say to God my Rock, Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?

The hard question returns. Why forgotten? Why mourning? God is rock—stable, reliable. But he feels absent. The enemy oppresses. The contradiction aches.

My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, Where is your God?

Mortal agony—the taunt wounds to the bone. Where is your God? The question that has no easy answer when you're far from the temple, drowning in waves.

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

The refrain returns. Same words. Same self-talk. Same choice to hope. Same promise of future praise. The psalm doesn't resolve the tension—it chooses hope within it.

The deer still pants. The soul still thirsts. But hope holds.