Longing for Home: An Advent Journey, 2016

Psalm 42
Isaiah 29:17-24
Acts 5:12-16

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 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.

If I had to pick a favorite psalm, this would be very near the top of the list. The beauty of the words, the images, the rhythm, the admission of uncertainty, the questioning of God’s presence and action, and then the gentle acceptance of whatever it might be that God would will for the singer.

Have you ever been thirsty for God? It’s been a while, but I have. And this psalm was my go-to resource during those seasons. I’m sure there will be others, times when I will wonder where God has got off to, when my own soul will feel ‘cast down.’

How I hope that I will remember to ask that soul of mine, ‘why?’ ‘Why are you cast down? Don’t you know that God is the rock, that God has been right there with you through every previous difficulty in your life? ‘

Yes, I want to come back to that.

And it seems to start with two things: remembering and singing. Only this time, the remembering part falls on the psalmist . . . and the singing is God’s. Did you catch that? Right after those glorious words, ‘deep calls to deep,’ comes this beauty:

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me. . .

‘His song is with me!’ If I listen very carefully, and if I do my part by remembering, then I can just catch the faintest glimpse of a melody, wafting by on the evening breeze. The Lord’s song is with me!