Psalm 42-43; Longing for God

"To the leader. A Maskil of the Korahites.
1 As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
the face of God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me continually,
‘Where is your God?’
4 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.
5 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 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 thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
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 must I walk about mournfully
because the enemy oppresses me?’
10 As with a deadly wound in my body,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
‘Where is your God?’
11 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.

Ps. 43:1 1Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause
against an ungodly people;
from those who are deceitful and unjust
deliver me!
2 For you are the God in whom I take refuge;
why have you cast me off?
Why must I walk about mournfully
because of the oppression of the enemy?
3 O send out your light and your truth;
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling.
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God my exceeding joy;
and I will praise you with the harp,
O God, my God.
5 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."

Introduction**

[*My exposition is taken from my 1993 book, with Glandion Carney, Longing for God: Prayer and the Rhythms of Life, pp. 25-32.]

St. Augustine, a church father of the fourth and fifth centuries, wrote a great deal about faith. He wrote so much that one authority said that if anyone claims to have read all of Augustine, that person is a liar. Perhaps the most popular of his many writings is his Confessions, written in the year 398 after he had been consecrated bishop of Hippo in North Africa. He wrote the Confessions to tell his congregation, and the larger world, how he had come to faith in Christ and to reflect on why it had taken him so long to make a decision for Christ when the claims of the gospel were so evidently true. In one passage, when reflecting on this problem, Augustine combines his sense of wonder, longing and inquisitiveness into a hymn of praise:

"I have learned to love you later, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learned to love you late! You were within me and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation. You were with me, but I was not with you...You called me; you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness. You shone upon me; your radiance enveloped me; you put my blindness to flight. You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet odor. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace" (10.27).

Augustine was a man who never lost his sense of longing for God. His pastoral concern, theological polemics, devotional writings, sermons and commentaries and hundreds of letters are all rooted in a soul that panted for God like the der that pants for the cool refreshing mountain streams. Augustine restlessly sought God and sought to find his rest in God. At the center of his being was the heart always burning, the mind always yearning, the total person always thirsting for God. He was a man who fully wanted to engage all his senses in his search for God. Note how the quotation draws on sound, sight, smell, taste and touch. All the senses are engaged, preoccupied, touched in the search for God and in God's search for us.

As we do our own reflections on longing for God, we can use Augustine as a model and stimulus. Augustine, in his youth, had longed deeply for things other than God--for sexual pleasure, for career success, for recognition in the larger world--but his sense of fulfillment in finding God is captured by his personal confession, made during his forties, "You have made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You" (1.1). May we fully use our past to aid us in our yearning for God in the present! I this spirit I invite you to consider Psalms 42 and 43.

Thirsting

It is striking how often in Scripture the experience of thirst and the quenching of thirst by clear, flowing water is related to our search for God. After a fire has devoured the open pastures, the prophet Joel notices how the wildlife behaves. "Even the wild animals pant for you; the streams of water have dried up" (Joel 1:20). Searching for water, searching for God. God is called the "spring of living waters" (Jer. 2:13). It is from God's throne that the "river of the water of life" flows (Rev. 22:1). We, too, if we trust in Christ, are able to mingle our water for the divine water, for Jesus said, "if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him" (Jn. 7:37-38). Water and God are both life-giving. Without them we dry up an die. Daily we need to come to the flowing strea, the river of life, to slake our thirst and refresh our lives. The deer pants for "streams of water," or, as other translations have it, "flowing streams." The deeer and we long for the living, fresh, clear water of God and not the polluted, clogged waterways that are all around us. Oh God, we pray, refresh us with your clear and sparkling water that we may be filled with your goodness!

[Continued]

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