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Read: Psalm 42
When we pray the Psalms, it helps me to rewrite verses in my own words, to lace the scripture with my own story. Here’s a start:
1 As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.
My version: I like the KJV which uses the word “hart” for “deer.” My Granddad and Dad shared the name Hartford, and were called Hart and Hart Jr. In our family we quoted this Psalm often, especially on birthdays. Since Dad died this year, my feeling about these words is strong. The image of the hart causes lots of longing in me. I think of all the deaths suffered in this year alone, along with my Dad.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?
After two years of pandemic life I am way past longing for the holy, the relief, restoration, balm of comfort, word of hope, the “all clear.” When? We are pushed past the point of tolerance, into jaded resentment. This feels like Abraham’s “present absence of Yahweh.”
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
I bear anger and frustration at those who take a position against me. I didn’t cause this. It feels they have already reduced me into only what I suffer, not my whole self.
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.
Now imagine our full sanctuary in worship, before the threat of virus, when we packed our pews for life-giving and nourishing sacred hours together.
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.
Suddenly this phrase catches me, that my deep suffering could be met by God’s deep thunder, waves and billows. I feel a glimmer that God is coming to me, and knows me even on my small level.
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.
I feel drawn up to attention by these questions, and I realize the presence of this viral enemy does not mean we have lost forever. We shall again praise him.
We know the pandemic will have an end. We long, as the hart, to gather at the stream and source of healing in God’s goodness. Healing takes many forms. May an Advent hope quicken our thirst and sharpen our sense of the constant and permanent God of Hope.
~Kelly Belcher
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