Psalm Meditation 1336 ¶Third Sunday After Epiphany ¶January 25, 2026 ¶Psalm 42 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2042&version=NRSVUE ¶People outside the Abrahamic faiths seem to think that if God, YHWH, comes to our aid it will be in a dramatic and readily visible way, with clouds and winds and giant chariots able to withstand even modern tanks and fighter jets. Their rhetoric is so convincing that some folks in Abrahamic faiths begin to believe that God will come in that way also. We have gotten used to the idea that anything from God has to be dramatic and awesome. Scripture, history, and experience tell a different story. ¶Events may seem dramatic to those who are in the midst of it, however they can almost always be pooh poohed away by those who want to doubt that God is active in our lives, let alone that God exists. For the most part God stays in the background, offering hope, and courage to those who need a prod in the direction of “positive peace, the presence of justice” MLKJ 1963. God stands at the front lines, the picket lines, the bread lines, etc. to be present with those who take a stand for grace, mercy, peace, and justice in the face of tyranny, oppression, might makes right authoritarianism, and other forms of injustice. ¶The psalmist is still ‘cast down’ however not without hope. Remembering all the ways that God has been active in the psalmist’s life and the struggles of the people and nation serves to lift spirits in the face of adversity. While the psalmist hopes that God will intervene in some direct and visible way, God tends to infuse hope, courage, and perseverance into those who live in the ways that lead to God, YHWH. ¶January 19, 2026 ¶LCM

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

Psalm Meditation 1081 Third Sunday in Lent March 7, 2021 Psalm 42 1 As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?” 4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. 5 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 6 and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. 7 Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me. 8 By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and 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 walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?” 10 As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?” 11 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. (NRSV) For some, God is the direct cause of everything that happens to us and for us in our lives. If you are sad, it is due to something God did to you. If you are happy, it is because of God. If you are really depressed, it is because God abandoned you for the time. It is a convenient way of thinking because it gives all the power for our lives into the hands of God. We may bear some responsibility for our actions, however the final cause is God. The psalmist leans that way, asking why God has walked away leaving the psalmist to the whims of an oppressive enemy. There is a thirst for the presence of God that can only be satisfied if God moves toward us. We have no ability or responsibility to move toward God. We can’t possibly have any power to move closer to God. In the courts of absolute rulers, people risked death if they entered the royal presence without permission. The only exception was the royal children. As children of God we are always allowed to enter the presence of God. We don’t need permission. If we are ‘cast down’ and ‘disquieted’ we can walk in and climb up into the lap of God where we can be lifted up and quieted by a firm, gentle hand. People and circumstances will continue to taunt us with the question, “Where is your God?” There may even be an attempt to block our way. We are children of God and our access is unlimited and unrestricted. “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” March 1, 2021 LCM

Psalm Meditation 952
Proper 19
September 16, 2018

Psalm 42
1 As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
5 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
6 and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me.
8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and 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 walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?”
10 As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
11 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.
(NRSV)

“Where is your God?” is a question we each have to deal with at some point in our lives. Someone will ask us to prove the existence of the divine in some form or other. And when we can’t offer them satisfactory proof they will consider themselves successful in debunking our faith. Without objective, verifiable, repeatable evidence the existence of divinity fails the tests of the scientific method and is thereby proven false. Or worse, we go through a crisis and ask the question internally. When we can’t find the answer in a verifiable way we move away from our previous assurance.

The enlightenment helped us do great damage to faith. It was the beginning of the scientific method, asking questions, running experiments and coming to objective, verifiable, repeatable conclusions. Science was so much fun we began to subject everything to the scientific method. If it couldn’t be proven, it wasn’t real. Folks set out to prove that the Bible is true, literal, and straight from the hand of God. There is an amazing amount of gymnastics involved in the process, twisting words, meanings, and concepts to fit into science. There were other parts of the Bible that had to be downplayed or ignored to fit into the science of the enlightenment and beyond.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. “ (Hebrews 11:1) Questions about God are not science questions, they are faith questions. In faith we are not looking for proof, we are looking for assurance. When we have faith, the world has not changed. The events of the world are the same, our actions in it are not that different than they were prior to coming to faith. The difference is a sense of assurance that we are not alone, that we do not have to do everything ourselves, that we do not suffer in isolation.

“Where is your God?” asks us to look for answers without looking for proof. If something can be proven there is no need for faith in order to believe. Faith questions are not about proof, they are about intuition, gut feeling, assurance, you know, faith.

September 10, 2018
LCM

Psalm Meditation 732
Third Sunday of Ordinary Time
June 29, 2014

Psalm 42
1 As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng,
 and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
5 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
6 and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me.
8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and 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 walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?”
10 As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
11 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.
(NRSV)

“Where is your God?” is an easy question to ask and a hard one to answer, especially in a time of trial. Those who ask the question as a taunting challenge are waiting for God to come down and fix the situation in which they find us. Because God is not active in the way they would anticipate, they assume that God is not present. God is supposed to come down in a fiery chariot, and with the wave of a hand save us from any and all calamities. Especially, in the time of the psalmist, the power of the nation was in direct correlation to the power of the God or gods of that nation. As a nation defeated Israel they would certainly ask the question of this psalm with companion question, “Why could your God not save you from us?”

It is a hard to answer because a part of us is asking the question as well. We too want to see God coming to our rescue at the head of an angel army all with weapons drawn swarming down on our foe. Whether the enemy is a person, group, nation or situation we want the whole host of heaven to come down and put things right, that is, the way we want them to be. When things don’t turn out that way, we find ourselves asking where God is in our lives. If God is present, certainly things would happen my way. It may be a fleeting feeling or one that lasts awhile, however we do wonder where God is in all of this.

Gratefully, our view of God has changed because of our experience throughout salvation history. From a view that God will rescue us from every calamity we have moved to a view that God is with us in all times and places. Yes, we still wish that God would swoop down and rescue us, even as we know that the presence of God through the good and bad is more of a gift than deliverance from bad stuff could ever be. Folks still challenge our faith by asking, “Where is your God?” and we still find ourselves wondering the same thing. Eventually we join the psalmist in the refrain of this psalm, “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.”

June 23, 2014
LCM