Raving. Sobbing. Longing. Remembering better days. Questioning it all. Psalm 42 weaves some of the most beautiful phrases and images of the whole Psalter with the haunting questions:

Where is your God?

Why are you downcast, o my soul?

The psalmist is a man undone. He will settle for nothing less than God in all of his fullness. But his is no epicurean calculus—Qohelet of Ecclesiastes fame says, “look, I’ve tried it all, none of it works”— nor is it pious sloganeering, bending the ear of the divine with platitudes. No, this is desperation.

The psalmist has been lost in the wilderness, through his thirst for relief, his sandpaper throat and his pounding head, he only had one source of water: his tears (v. 3). Every now and then he would see the mirage of a memory, a flashback to the time where he led the procession of God’s people into the Temple, praising and feasting. The psalmist can envision a waterfall, cascading with refreshment and goodness, and it beckons to the deepest longings within him (v.7) But like all the water in this barren land, the image of fleeting joy would evaporate.

why are you downcast, o my soul?

It’s no reminder to self, to “cheer up! Be happy!” The psalmist asks the question, whether it’s rhetorical or taking an honest inventory we don’t know. But he simply and starkly concludes, “My soul is downcast within me” (v. 6). It’s the prologue to the other, far more disquieting question:

where is your God?

Seriously, where is he? As the deer moves traverses terrain filled with thorns, slippery slopes, and predators all for a sip of water, so the psalmist’s very existence hinges upon a drop from the fountain of living water. And yet, searching frantically, losing consciousness and sanity, the psalmist still lacks the one thing he needs:

I say to God, my rock,

“Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I walk about mournfully

because the enemy oppresses me?”

As with a deadly wound in my body,

my adversaries taunt me,

while they say to me continually,

“Where is your God?”

Psalm 42 is a stunning testament to the human spirit and to the lingering power of an encounter with God. We are given no discernible change in circumstance for the psalmist, no quick resolution. The question “where is your God?” Rings like a haunting, dissonant chorus. But the psalmist holds on to the love that God has sworn. The psalmist makes beauty, from the suffering.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

Perhaps you’ve found yourself in this place. You know that you’re down, you know why you’re down, and you know only God to his presence and promise can fix it—but nothing seems to be happening, and nothing is working, and God seems so very distant and aloof. Our forefathers and mothers in the faith called this the dark night of the soul, the purifying furnace of God’s perceived absence. Where is God? It’s not the whole picture, but in this brief glimpse, he’s only in the hope, only in the longing that refuses to settle for anything than less than God. Psalm 42 is God’s meeting us to wrestle and struggle through the dark night. On the other side of the dark is a blessing, a new name, and a new way of walking in the world.

Hope in God. You shall again praise him.

The scriptural stories and prayers offer no spectators’ vista, no safe seats in the back from which we can quietly slip out just before the show wraps up. Instead, they immerse us in the drama of salvation, improvising with God and our neighbors the plot twists of being human. Our obsession with ourselves, in our modern western world, has sought to subdue story, to make it subservient to self—to self-help and self-actualization. But herein lies the genius of the library of the scriptures, stories that are true, resist our domesticating and dominating impulses. The individual psalms are not ahistorical prayers, each “applicable” or “relevant’ to every experience or feeling. Rather, are a call to receive the gift of salvation, renewal of our selves through recognizing and relinquishing our selves—that which the scriptures call repentance.

Because the stories in the Bible refuse to serve us, they refuse to valorize us as the hero and so we have to assume other roles—we play the villain, the victim, those who don’t see the whole picture. Psalm 41 is a good exercise in reading the Bible well. There will be times that call for us to read it at face value, to read it from the vantage point of the narrator, to echo his prayers, and to receive his word as witness. And there will be times, likely more frequent, that call for us to soberly acknowledge that we are the one’s who have done harm. We have looked on others in malice wishing ill upon them (v. 5). We have hearts that gather slander (v. 6) soaking it in so that we can gleefully spread gossip (v. 6, 8). We have hated those who have placed feasts before us (v. 9).

David ends with a plea for mercy so that he can enact vengeance (v. 10). But God is far too merciful for that. Instead of giving into our demands for retribution, God will send revelation. Jesus reveals both God and humanity fully. Jesus unveils God brimming with beauty and grace and how to be human in a light so fierce. And at the same time how readily we lift up our heels against the one who handed us the bread of his body, broken for us.

Jesus’ integrity upholds him in the crossfire of our treacheries because he draws from the everlasting well of God’s good pleasure (v. 11)—this is my son with whom I am well-pleased (Matthew 3v17). Jesus’ enemies cannot triumph over him (v.11) because he refuses to hate them—forgive them father for they know not what they do (Luke 23v34). Jesus will be kept in the presence of God forever (v. 12) because he is the eternal word of doxology—it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him (Acts 2v24).

To read the story well is to be honest about our part in it. Jesus assumes our role of brokenness and blasphemy so that we can assume his role of blessedness and blessing. This story will not serve us but it will set us free.