A Prayer for Relief
For Meditation (Elisabeth Hayes)
My dry and weary garden has enjoyed some much-needed relief from the summer storms over the last several days. After many weeks of drought and intolerable heat, I bet you all gave a sigh of relief for a rainy Saturday, even if it ruined your pool plans.
Our psalm for this week—Psalm 42—has some of the most evocative imagery of all of the psalms about the metaphorical experience of drought and relief from drought. The writer first portrays himself as desperately thirsty, dry as the cracked earth. He's not thirsty for water, but he's longing for an experience of connection with God that he once had and cannot now reach. The psalmist is writing from a place of spiritual turmoil—a turmoil wrapped up in the question, "Where is my God?"
In preparation for worship, read Psalm 42 and consider a time when you or someone you love has experienced this kind of longing for and estrangement from God. Think on that experience or that person with compassion, holding it up before God. Finally, consider the question: what hope does the psalmist offer to those who find themselves in this place?
Psalm 42
1 Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
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.
6 My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
8 By day the Lord directs his love,
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 go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
10My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
11Why, 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.