Text: Psalm 42:1-5
As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, While they continually say to me, “Where is your God?” When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, With the voice of joy and praise, With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance.
Devotion
True Christians have a deep, inescapable need for heartfelt communion with God. They cannot do without Him; whatever else is offered them does not satisfy them. Their soul thirsts and longs for God Himself, the living God. They must be able to speak with Him from their heart daily and be nourished by His Word, and they must always be present when the Church gathers for worship. The thirsty need no invitation to drink; the infant’s mouth and the mother’s breast go together by instinct. Living Christians need no commands to go to church, but on account of the temptations of the flesh and the devil the Lord’s command is good that says: “Remember to keep the day of rest holy.” Even the devil knows that the diligent use of God’s Word is more necessary than anything else, so he tempts us more than anything else to forsake the Word; and he cannot stand it that we sit still and listen to Jesus speaking! So the Lord says with this commandment: “Remember!” It is a precious command that completely agrees with the inward law of every sanctified soul. Whoever can go without God’s Word day after day is surely dead and darker in heart than a heathen, and whoever does not have a desire for the Divine Service and the Lord’s Supper has no part in the kingdom of heaven. When in the darkness of temptation believers lose sight of the Lord, the soul becomes like a drooping reed, or even like a storming ocean. If we didn’t have the Word, we would despair. With the help of the Word hope is kept alive: “Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance.”
I don’t know which is worse: horrible thoughts of denying God which are like “murder in my bones,” or feelings of terror of God who is the righteous Judge, whose anger burns and billows over the soul (Psa 42:7). But the upright receives help forever. “The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, And in the night His song shall be with me – A prayer to the God of my life” (Psa 42:8). Whoever longs for Him, just as the deer longs for the water brooks, and therefore eats the bread of tears all day long, finally ends his lament with a song of hope for victory over the powers of darkness: “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God” (Psa 42:11). But the Word was and is the light and comfort, the shield and weapon of all the saints.
Hymn
Lord, Thou art my rock of salvation,
My house I have built upon Thee;
O if Thou shouldst fail as foundation,
My ruin it surely would be;
Lord, deep unto deep now is calling,
Thy waves and Thy billows appalling
Arise to go over my soul.
Why art thou disquiet within me?
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
Confide in thy God, let Him win thee!
Still hope in thy God, Him extol!
For surely once dawneth a morrow,
When, freed from thy care and thy sorrow,
Thou praises shalt sing to thy God.
Grundtvig: As after the waterbrooks L 518:4.6 ELH 462:4.6 tr. C. Døving;
tune: Som tørstige Hjort