When the Heart Cries Out for God: A Look Into Psalmsنموونە

Day 3: A Misunderstood Longing

As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. (Psalm 42:1 NLT)

The psalmist’s heart was breaking. He no longer led processions into the Temple (Psalm 42:4) and felt oppressed by an ungodly nation (43:1; the next psalm is a continuation of this one). His alienation had left him with “only tears for food” (42:3). He had sunk deep down into discouragement and was finding it difficult to pull himself up.

We can only speculate about the context. Was he in exile in a foreign land, or perhaps in the northern kingdom of Israel after its split with the southern kingdom of Judah, where the Temple was? Was he deprived of Temple celebrations for some other reason? Whatever the case, he was no longer at God’s sanctuary to see foreigners being drawn to God. He could hear the taunts of the enemy questioning why his God wasn’t even around to hear his pleas (42:10). This was not how the Kingdom was supposed to be. He longed for a sense of belonging.

Even more, he longed for God himself.

Some people will think we’re naïve to depend on God in a crisis. We’ll wait for God to answer our prayers, knowing there’s often a gap between promise and fulfillment, but others will see the gap as evidence that our faith is misguided. This is an inevitable part of the believer’s experience, and it’s painful. It intensifies our longing for God to show up.

Re-Envision Your Feeling

Clearly the psalmist thinks he—or more specifically, his soul—sees a false picture. What’s his solution? He talks to himself. He instructs his soul, not to convince himself of what isn’t true but of what is. He identifies his misplaced emotions and points himself back to reasonable hope and the certainty that he will praise God again in his future.

Some might call this “positive thinking.” Scripture portrays it as a return to reality. There’s nothing fake or superficial about it. If we needed any evidence of our ability to reorient our vision, this is it: We can actually tell ourselves what to think, choose the vision we’ll focus on, and replace one perspective with another. Our circumstances and enemies try to impose their vision upon us, but God tells us the truth. And his vision always fills us with hope.