Psalm 42: A Song In The Dark Night Of The Soul
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.