Slideshow image

Psalm 42:1-5 – (NIV)
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
5 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

Psalm 42 is the somewhat famous Psalm from which comes that old chorus “As the deer.” The Psalmist expresses his thirst for the Lord as something equivalent to a thirsty deer searching for a stream. We soon discover this Psalmist struggles with despair and feeling down. His soul is “downcast” and he is “disturbed” within himself (verse 5).

Yet in verse 4, he describes something that we all experience right now. He remembers how he “used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.” He used to gather with others for worship.

Today is the 3rd Sunday our church is not gathering for worship. We are connecting online but we can’t gather because of the virus and government restrictions. Yet somehow, this memory of the joining others to gather in worship gives him some perspective. Though his soul is downcast and disturbed he remembers the joy and praise of worshiping the Lord with others. Then he preaches to himself at the end of verse 5. “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

One benefit of this difficult time may be our increased thirst for the Lord and an increased desire to gather with others for worship. A deer thirsts for water when it has not had water for some time. We can thirst for the Lord and worship when denied that opportunity for some time. So while we wait until we can worship together again, satisfy your soul thirst on God Himself. Let the thirst for worshiping together grow until we meet again.