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 his current 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 – just like Jesus did on the cross.

And Jesus’ example helps us understand that sometimes God’s plans include times when we feel distant from Him. Sometimes God’s plans 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 it 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 why does he insist on hoping in God in the midst of his difficult circumstances? 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, God is his rock, his place of ultimate safety. Because as verses 5 and 11 say, God is his only salvation.

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

Psalm 42 (ESV)

To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, 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 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 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
6 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 I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10 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.