If you’re stranded on an island it would be immensely comforting to come across footprints. To know simply that, at the very least, someone else has suffered what we are suffering is comforting. “Travelers have been delighted to see the footprint of man on a barren shore, and we love to see the waymarks of pilgrims while passing through the vale of tears.” The book of Psalms in the Bible are footprints on a barren shore for us.
In Ps. 42 the author describes himself as a desperately thirst person. “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?” The psalmist here is dying of thirst, looking for God, spending his days and night sobbing. He is depressed and his soul is “cast down” and in “turmoil” within him. “My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
When was the last time you asked, from the depths of your soul, “God, where are you? Have you forgotten me? Do you even hear me anymore?” When was the last time you said with this psalmist, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” When was the last time you were desperate to go back to the good times, when you thought, “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…”
It is nice to come across these footprints of someone who has been there before us, who has walked to path of the dark night of the soul when God feels absent. In these moments or long seasons, we are faced with two options. We can either listen to ourselves, the world, or the devil, or we can listen to God. The author here chooses the latter.
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” This seems like an odd question because he knows exactly why he is cast down. So, why is asking this question? He is asking it because he is beginning to remind himself that he has good reason not to be cast down and in turmoil. “Hope in God”. This is incredible to think about. On the one hand the psalmist is in turmoil because God feels absent. And yet he begins to remind himself that he doesn’t need to be in turmoil because of God. ” My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you…” The psalmist is here in a thunderstorm where dark clouds have hidden the sun but he is reminding himself that the sun is still shining.
Where hope? Where is joy? Where is security? Where is rest? It’s not in you. It’s in God. And the psalmist gets specific about God, answering what about God gives us hope. “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.” Let’s put this simply: “God loves me.” In the thunderstorm, the sun is still shining. The sun hasn’t moved, it hasn’t stopped shining, and it will prevail over the storm clouds. It will break through. Keep asking and telling yourself, “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.”
