Day 3: Parched - Overwhelmed - Misjudged?

DAY 3: Think it through…
More thoughts on Ps 42&43 inspired by and taken from John Goldingay.

The book of Lamentations is based on acrostic poems (in Hebrew). So that every letter of the alphabet is systematically used as the writer pours out his anguish. It has been noted that this makes the expression of grief both thorough but also constrained. So that while the grief is fully laid out – it is not endless – it has a limit.

The psalmist, as we have seen, doesn’t hold back on expressing his frustrations – but equally he knows there is a time to move on. Even as he vents his emotions he applies his mind.

The Past (42:4)
He remembers days gone by – good days, times of joy and spiritual health. Such recollections were ‘no doubt, a bitter sweet experience’. On the one hand such memories could just make his present situation all the more painful – but on the other hand it reminds us ‘that the present situation is not permanent. It had a before, and (as we shall see later) it will have an after’.

Perhaps we look back to better days – days of joyful service, excitement about church and Christian activities, days when being a Christian seemed full of promise. In times of darkness we may be tempted to think that even those days weren’t really real – that we were kidding ourselves even then. But they were real – they did exist – it was like that.

The bad thing about good things, and the good thing about bad things, is this: they both come to an end.

Talk to yourself…
Just as he praised God back then the psalmist (although not quite there yet) tells himself that one day he will know the delight of praising God again: ‘Why are you downcast, O my Soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, My Saviour and my God.’

The repeated refrain of these two psalms centres on the psalmist talking to himself (42:5,11; 43:5) - articulating to himself spiritual truth. It is the sermon we must preach to ourselves – ‘come on, hang-in there, God understands – he is not trying to crush me, he is on my side (Rom 8:31). To defiantly assert that one day this will pass and I will stand in the place of joyful praise once again.