Psalm Meditation 1176 ¶First Sunday After Christmas ¶January 1, 2023 ¶Psalm 42 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+42&version=NRSVUE (NRSV) ¶Sometimes we think we are hungry for something but we don’t quite know what it is. We are aware that our bodies are in need of something and we reach for a snack to meet the need. After eating one thing we realize that was not what we were craving, so we eat something else, and something else until we are stuffed to the gills, and we are still not satisfied. In these cases, the need was not for food, it was for water. Instead of slaking our thirst, we satisfy a non existent hunger. ¶We act in similar fashion in our spiritual lives. We are aware of an emptiness, while having no idea what that emptiness is. We try filling that space with money, with objects, with power. Each of those things satisfies for a moment, and then we crave more, and more, and more. We haven’t really filled our emptiness, we have covered it up. Sometimes we even convince ourselves that all of the stuff in our lives is what we wanted all along. We may not even know that we continue to have an emptiness. ¶The psalmist addresses the emptiness within and offers the exhortation to hope in God. Know that though there is an empty feeling now, God is ready, willing, and able to fill the void with a holy presence. Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and religious philosopher, said, “There is a God-shaped emptiness in the heart of each one of us which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God.” This psalm calls on God to slake the thirst, and satisfy the hunger by filling us with that which only God can fill us. ¶December 29, 2022 ¶LCM