Week 16 Psalm 42
Easter Sunday morning and I landed on Psalm 42. It’s a things-are-really-not-going-very-well-for-me psalm, and the despondent writer is asking himself why-am-I-in-despair?
Even though he asked the question, it looks like he actually does know why he’s down. First there’s a bunch of negative things happening, and secondly the Lord isn’t offering him any back-up.
So his real question is more like ‘how-can-I-stop-feeling-this-bad?
Eventually Despondent Writer’s question leads to an answer: hope in God.
When you think about it this isn’t a bad answer. A bad answer would be something like: well-let’s-just-hope-for-the-best. Hoping for the best, apart from sounding pretty nice and pretty caring (which is its real strength) doesn’t have much living-my-life heft. It’s a disengaged virtue-word. Despondent Writer’s antidote isn’t: Just Hope. It’s: Hope in Something. Hope connected to something is better than hope disconnected from anything.
The God Despondency Writer has in mind is the God that the OT is portraying as being decisive, involved, insistent, engaged, a God who has definite opinions and values and preferences and standards.
Despondent Writer is saying that the answer to despair is to hope in the concrete God who’s described in scripture.
Note: quote is from Psalm 42:5 & 11 (NASB version). Pastor Steve talked about hope in his Resurrection Sunday sermon (from I Peter 1:3-5 (I won’t get there until December)). So it was a nice coincidence.