In these weird days do you ever feel like that simple question: “how are you doing?” is really hard to answer? Does it get even harder when someone goes even deeper to the place of “How’s your soul?” or “where are you seeing and experiencing God in this moment?” My short answer to all of those questions would probably be “It’s complicated.” From what I’m hearing from others, I don’t think I’m alone.
I’m not angry at God, not holding Him at arm’s length. I am seeing things He is trying to teach me and believing His promises to be true.
AND
I’m struggling. I’m lonely. I don’t feel overwhelmed by His presence in the ways I have this past year.
I feel BOTH close AND distant.
I feel BOTH His Presence AND His absence.
I was pondering this paradox when I met with Jesus Sunday morning. I was trying to run away from the noise of my kids and found myself bundled in a blanket on my favorite hammock swing on our porch. As I shared before, I have been walking through the Psalms to try and find voice to all these swirling emotions and thoughts. I got myself settled and opened to the bookmark that lay on Psalm 42. And as I read my heart went from guilt to consolation, to feeling known, to praise.
This is my Covid-19 psalm. Maybe it will be yours too. As you read this passage, read it slowly. Take it in. Listen to this beautiful conversation between the Psalmist and God and see if you see yourself here.
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?”
10 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
11 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.
Did you hear what I heard? Did you feel what I felt?
As I got to the passage those first few lines were so familiar and yet felt so far away. I started singing that sweet old worship song in my head that I sang to myself as a teenager to call myself to go deeper; to go nearer; to pursue Jesus. If I were to give a picture of spiritual health it would be this: longing for God in the same way a thirsty animal longs for water.
As I read it, I could think of moments in the past 46 days when I have been there. And yet it wasn’t like it was before. It was like now I was hearing God with headphones over my ears. Now I was seeing God without my glasses on. I still longed to hear His voice, but it was muffled. I still longed to see His face, but it was blurry.
So, what has been and what really IS the most beautiful picture of intimacy with God felt both near and far off. And I felt discouraged. I wanted to put it down. But I didn’t. And I’m so glad I didn’t.
Because in the very next verse, I found myself shaken awake by this dramatic shift. In verses 1 and 2, we have this pool of water that is our hope for life—the thing we long for and seek after for survival. But in verse 3, we have the psalmist’s current reality. And there is water there. There is sustenance. But it is not the cool waters of the Lord. No, the thing the psalmist is feasting on, his “food day and night” are his TEARS. It is a picture of suffering. It is a picture of feeling abandoned as “men say to me all day long: ‘where is your God?”’ And that, THAT is a feeling I can hold onto. I feel those lines just as viscerally as I have felt the dry throat longing for the quenching of Jesus.
And just as I am processing this, verse 4 hits. And along with the Psalmist I am transported to other days…older days…days when I too led the multitudes in shouts of joy and thanksgiving. That was real and the current pouring out of the pain within my soul in this very moment is real.
So, in 4 verses we have gone from the heights of longing to be with God, to the depths of abandonment and back to the memory of awe-inspiring praise. And the rest is the same. It moves from the heights to the depths and right back up again. Anyone else feel a bit of emotional and spiritual whiplash?
The psalmist is expressing his heart to God and he is all over the map!
He feels BOTH close AND distant.
He feels BOTH His Presence AND His absence.
Does this sound familiar?
Even the refrain in verses 6 and 11 is this beautiful “Both, And.” It is an acknowledgement of our current despair (“Why are you downcast, O my soul?”). It is a call to hope (“Put your hope in God…”). As I read… as I listened… as I allowed the Holy Spirit to wash over me… I felt God’s grace fill my heart. It was as if He was saying:
“What you are feeling is not foreign to me.”
“What you are experiencing is accurate.”
“Your ups and downs are part of the journey.”
“They are NOT evidence of lack of trust on your part. They are NOT an indication that your faith is not strong.”
“They are the fruit of your holy wrestle between my promises and your current reality.”
“They are the evidence that you believe I am in control of all things AND that you can come to me with your pain, your doubts, your WHOLE heart.”
And oh, the consolation these words provided me.
So, if you need consolation today, if you need to know that God is with you through the doubt, through the sadness, through the anger, just open your Bible. That’s what it’s there for!