Panting for Water or Drowning Under the Waves? A consideration of Psalm 42

Last summer, as Lorie walked back downhill to our house under the trees after having retrieved our mail, she was startled by a hawk swooping to capture a chipmunk in our front yard. It was a confluence of creatures. Hawk, chipmunk and human nearly converged in their reverie of chasing game, enjoying maple seeds and considering the mail, respectively.

Each one had their world rocked in some way.

1. The Hawk nearly lost its dinner because it passed so close to a human. It nearly had to alter course.
2. Lorie found a much deeper appreciation for the power of beating wings—the hawk passed that close—as well as the circle of life as she listened to the squeaking chipmunk as it was carried away.
3. The chipmunk found its life was at an end. It always knew, instinctively, such a thing could happen, but it had never happened to it yet in its brief lifespan.  One careless moment of gorging on seeds, however, and its life flipped from joy to terror.

Life throws blocks at us like these. We cannot predict them. We cannot avoid them. They shape us without our permission and we are left trying to make sense of them. For now, let’s call it getting displaced.  Displacement means we once were here, now we are there. Something moved us without filling out the proper requisition forms. Protest as much as we want, life is different from now on because that “thing” happened.

Sometimes, as for the hawk, we are blocked, or nearly so, from our desire.

Sometimes, as for Lorie, we are startled into new knowledge. Our peace is shattered by it, and we have to absorb what we just learned. Remaining shocked does not help.

And sometimes, as for the chipmunk as for us all, something pops into our life that cripples, maims or even snuffs out life.

We once were there, now we are here. What shall we do?

We could call the 42^nd Psalm, a Psalm of displacement. The Psalmist once lived at the heart of worship in Jerusalem, or at least went on numerous pilgrimages there. This fits well with the title of the Psalm, telling us it comes from the Sons of Korah, one of the great Levitical families that led the worship of Israel. The Psalmist apparently had many wonderful experiences in leading worship, and being an important part of the worship of his people. He felt a strong connection to God during these times.  Now, however, he was not in Jerusalem. He is somewhere beyond the Jordan River, north and east of the great city. He is no longer able to get there—whether through illness, aging or even oppression we do not know. It doesn’t matter, though, because the effect is the same. He feels cut off—displaced—from what he loves and from the connection to God he once had. He pines for it to the point of physical illness.

He compares the thirst of a deer looking for water in the middle of extreme drought to the thirst he feels for the God he thinks he may have lost. This comparison to physical and spiritual thirst occurs elsewhere in Scripture. Psalm 63:1 and Joel 1:19,20 are examples:

O God, you are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

my soul thirsts for you,

my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land

where there is no water.

-Ps 63:1NIV

To you, O Lord, I call,

for fire has devoured the open pastures

and flames have burned up all the trees of the field.

Even the wild animals pant for you;

the streams of water have dried up

and fire has devoured the open pastures.

-Joel 1:19-20 NIV

The displacement felt by this Psalmist manifests itself in outright depression. Listen to the symptoms he lists:

• Crying instead of eating (v.3)
• Alienation from others (v.3)
• Wanting to recover the idealized past (v.4)
• Feeling downcast in spirit (v.5) –the word “soul” here refers to one’s life-force, as if one’s soul is giving way and is about to expire.
• Stuck, asking repeated questions: (vv.2,5,9,11)

The displacement felt by this Psalmist creates a divide between feeling and intellect. The Psalmist feels cut off, mourns over what is lost, wonders if God is with him. Yet, the Psalmist knows some information about God that contradicts what he is feeling:

• Songs like this pain-filled one, can be written and used in worship of the Lord.

• God is not subject to our direction. Our inability to see him, or for our enemy to see him, does not mean God is not there. In fact, the Psalmist knows that even though it feels like drought to him, that God is actually flowing all around him, doing a mighty work in his life.  He feels like a dry land crying out for rain, but knows God is cascading and drenching him with water all the time. Reading this Psalm took me back to two travel adventures I had. The first was getting caught in the power of the surf at Embassy Beach in the Dominican Republic. Actually, I got caught twice. The first was the undertow, pulling me out to sea. I was strong enough a swimmer then to swim long and hard cross wise to the tow to fight my way back. The second, now sticking closer to shore, was doing backwards prone somersaults when a particularly nasty wave turned some awesome body-surfing into the largest salt water ingestion I ever had. The second water adventure was our family hiking up a tall waterfall outside of Caracas, Venezuela, following a trail behind the home of my brother-in-law and sister, who lived there at the time. We kept climbing and climbing and climbing, and never did get all the way to the top of that elegant cascade. There were so many pools and flows and drop-off points—always changing, always moving.  I find this to be a rich illustration. We tend to think God doles himself out to us in little dollops and trickles. Perhaps the better image is for us to realize we are drowning in God. We end up resisting because we would rather have the little sips of God at the times of our choosing. We don’t know what to do with a God who doesn’t fit in the categories or the structures where we place him.

• The Lord is with him wherever he is, in all his days and all his nights (v.8)—even when he cannot feel God’s presence. The Psalmist can keep singing the songs and praying the prayers, whether he is in Jerusalem or not. The words of one of my favorite hymns get it as well as any other:

My life goes on in endless song:

Above earth’s lamentation,

I catch the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing;

It finds an echo in my soul–

How can I keep from singing?

What tho’ my joys and comfort die?

The Lord my Saviour liveth;

What tho’ the darkness gather round?

Songs in the night he giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,

While to that rock I’m clinging;

Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,

How can I keep from singing?

I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin;

I see the blue above it;

And day by day this pathway smooths,

Since first I learned to love it.

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,

A fountain ever springing;

All things are mine since I am his–

How can I keep from singing?

-Robert Lowry

• He can continue to place his hope in the Lord. With this last piece of knowledge the Psalmist has, we find the strategy the Psalmist uses to deal with these depressive feelings of displacement.  He meets each new round of interior questioning and exterior taunting with an affirmation of a faith he knows but may not feel.  He seems determined to play this tape as often as he must until he has some return to joy—if he ever does at all. After all, we must remember that having faith while being displaced seldom means we will get placed back as it once was just because we confess a faith in God. God is more likely to help us see the waves all around us rather than return us to the trickling stream of our preference.

Another Scripture passage believers often turn to in seeking hope in the middle of feeling lost and displaced might help us here:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” -Jeremiah 29:4-14  NIV

These words come from a letter Jeremiah wrote to fellow Jews living in exile. These are instructions God gives them about how to live in their displaced place.  The promise given with these instructions is that there would be a return someday—for most people, long after they died. The hope that would keep them going was hope of the promise being fulfilled for their descendants.

All of us will feel displaced at one point or another. Life is not what it was. It is not turning out as you expected. The categories in which you placed everything in nice little boxes are exploding in  your face.

• It might be your body and its failure to stay well that displaced you.
• It might be circumstances of someone mistreating you.
• It might be job loss.
• It might be disappointment and alienation with family members.
• Maybe choices your children make present predicaments for you that make you rethink your values, or even your faith.
• Maybe the preferences you have for church life and worship are challenged by younger people.
• Maybe you love the rural life and feel your heritage fading into oblivion as the rural fabric changes.
• Or, you thought adult life had a certain wonder to it, but now that you are entering your teen years, you are finding it brutal and hypocritical.

Displacement happens in all kinds of ways. It leaves us alienated and feeling abandoned by God—but mostly because we prefer to control the ways God comes to us. One of the great benefits of displacement—if we but choose to keep telling ourselves that our hope is in the Lord—is that we can go deeper into the waters of God. Instead of coming as a consumer, drinking when we decide we are thirsty in the manner we prefer to do our drinking at God’s stream, we place ourselves in the waters of God—letting God fill us beyond any capacity we thought we had, letting the waters of God spill out through us and becoming the source of living water from which others might drink.

I watched a Dennis the Menace Christmas movie with my nephews this week—an entirely cheesy mish-mash of Hank Ketcham’s cartoon characters and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In this case it is Mr. Wilson (played by Robert Wagner of all people) who is Scrooge because he lost his Christmas Spirit. Dennis (or is it Tiny Tim?) fails spectacularly and causes much damage at Mr. Wilson’s expense in his attempts to retrieve Mr. Wilson’s Christmas Spirit. Finally Dennis begins to doubt peace and goodwill to men himself.  Dennis’ child-like Christmas spirit is now in jeopardy. It takes an angel, the spirits of Christmas past, present and future mixed into one, to show Mr. Wilson the error of his ways and helps him regain his joy and wonder at the day.

I admit it, tears came easily and flowed readily for me as Mr. Wilson appeared on Christmas morning with the list of thousands of dollars Dennis’ parents owed him for damages Dennis had caused. As Dennis’ father attempts to apologize yet again and promises to repay Mr. Wilson somehow, Mr. Wilson breaks into a large smile, folds the list in half, tears it into shreds and throws it in the air.  In that moment of that cheesy movie, I could feel the water of God flowing around me. It certainly flowed down my face.

And I needed it.

• I worry about my wife, my daughter, my son and daughter in law. I’m concerned for my nephews and nieces.
• I live in a place of last resort. Although I’ve learned to love Wisconsin as my home, we went there to face long-term illness and death, and away from twenty years of life and ministry in Northern Indiana.
• Six weeks ago a relative robbed me.
• This week my daughter was summarily fired from her first job.
• Next week my wife is scanned yet again to determine how we will treat yet another round of cancer.

In my darkest moments I feel I have good reason to act like Mr. Wilson or this Psalmist, yearning for the joy and standing I once had.

Or, I can throw myself in the waters of God, and take the list of all my bitternesses and sorrows and tear them up. I can decide, in spite of how I may feel, to keep stating my hope:

I’m trading my sorrows.

I’m trading my sickness.

I’m trading my pain.

I’m laying them down for the joy of the Lord.

Though the sorrow may last for the night, his joy comes in the morning.

mark l vincent