Week 19: Psalm 42

Psalm 42

I remember the first time I let myself ponder some of the psalms where David is so gut wrenchingly real that I found myself shocked they were in the Scriptures. It does not get more honest than Psalm 42 when it comes to despair, pain, and sadness in the human soul. If we can grab ahold of the truth in this psalm, it would drastically change our relationship with God. 

Come with me to the end of John in chapter 21. Verse 25, says, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

If the authors of scripture had to narrow down what they put in the Bible, then we should really pay attention to what was chosen to be shared with us about God, His people and His heart in these pages. Even still, if God used one of His precious pages of inspired Word to let us see inside the dark and deep wrestling of the soul, then we get to know more about God's heart. This shows you and I that God deeply cares about our pain—that pain is not a strange experience, but one that we can expect as human beings. 

God cares deeply about our pain—so much so that He allows us to see the real and raw wrestling of a human heart like David with the pain of life. This is not the only time we see this in scripture. When we enter the scene at the Garden of Gethsemane, we see the King of the world in such deep despair that He is sweating blood. God lets us peer into the despair of His own Son's soul to give hope for us in our pain. 

So what do we learn from these texts in scripture? Do we just relate and continue to live in our pain? No, we do what the psalmist does. We do what Jesus does. We put our hope in God. We get real with God while honestly telling Him what is hard. We hold the tension of trusting obedience and real questions before the throne just like David did and just like Jesus did, because in every season we have a full and never ending hope in God. 

-Brooke