What do you long for? What do you thirst for? What is your greatest desire? Chances are, that’s really your god, whatever your profession of faith may be. In the first 5 verses, the psalmist reveals that God is really the One Who is most important to him. For whatever reason – perhaps because he has been forcibly removed from the Promised Land and carried off into exile, he is no longer able to go to the Temple to worship. And he loses sleep over it.

To make matters worse, his desire for God is combined with a certainty that God really is in charge of everything – including the psalmist’s inability to worship in the Temple. In verse 7, he affirms that somehow God is in control even of the waves of trouble that engulf him. That’s why in verse 9, he cries out that God has forgotten him.

But Jesus cried out in the same way on the cross, thus showing us that God’s plans can include times when we feel distant from Him. God’s plans for us can even include great suffering, especially when we try to live for the glory of God and the good of others in a sinful world. We don’t have to be carried off into exile to feel the pain and weariness of the struggle, the friction of trying to swim upstream in the face of godless cultural currents.

But even in the midst of the psalmist’s suffering, and even though he knows God could bring his pain to an end at any time, he does not lose faith. Instead, he allows his longing for God to win out over his despair. And how does he keep his hope alive? Because as verse 2 says, he knows God is living. Because as verse 8 says, he knows God’s faithful, covenant-keeping love never fails. Because as verse 9 says, he knows God is his rock, his place of ultimate safety. Because as verses 5 and 11 say, he knows God is his only salvation.

And because the psalmist knows who God is, he can keep on longing for God, and keep on hoping in God and keep on praying to God, just as Jesus did on the cross. So because Jesus rose from the dead, may our hope in God’s love and protection and salvation be steadfast, no matter what may happen to us today.

Psalm 42 (NASB)

For the choir director. A Maskil of the sons of Korah.
As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for Thee, O God.
2 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 day long, “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember, and I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
5 Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence.
6 O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember Thee from the land of the Jordan, And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep at the sound of Thy waterfalls; All Thy breakers and Thy waves have rolled over me.
8 The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life.
9 I will say to God my rock, “Why hast Thou forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10 As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
11 Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance, and my God.