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I say to God my Rock, \u201cWhy have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?\u201d My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, \u201cWhere is your God?\u201d Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:9-11)

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These have long been two of my favourite psalms.\xa0 They walk through a full progression of human experience.\xa0

Psalm 42 opens in a dry and barren place. \xa0God seems far away and the psalmist seems far away from God.\xa0 \u201cAs the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.\xa0 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.\u201d\xa0 People are taunting: \u201cwhere is your God?\u201d\xa0 And the psalmist can only just remember the times when they used to go to church.\xa0 But now the psalmist is lost, adrift.\xa0 Far from God.

Then comes the refrain: \u201cWhy, my soul are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.\u201d

As the first scene passes to the second, the psalmist begins to remember.\xa0 There\u2019s a memory of what it was like when the relationship with God was strong and life-giving\u2014filled with music, prayer, and love.\xa0 There\u2019s a memory of what it was like to stand in worship with the gathered congregation when things were good\u2014when there was joy and praise and warm fellowship to be shared. The longing of the downcast soul causes one to think back, remember, and savour the goodness of what once was.

And that memory begins to spark some hard questions of lament, like why isn\u2019t it that way now?\xa0 God is still my rock, so God: \u201cwhy have you forgotten me?\xa0 Why must I go about oppressed...?\u201d\xa0 Why is it that I have to suffer these constant questions from my foes that make me doubt your presence and love?\xa0 Why does there have to be some feeling of truth and pain in their lie about you being far off?\xa0

Then comes the refrain.\xa0 \u201cWhy, my soul are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.\u201d

As Psalm 43 opens, the prayer turns from longing, remembering, and lament to petition.\xa0 The fires of passion and the memory of a strong relationship the Psalmist still has with this God drives the Psalmist back to God to boldly ask for answers.\xa0 \u201cVindicate me, my God, and plead my cause... rescue me... send me your light and faithful care... let them bring me to... the place where you dwell.\xa0 Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight.\xa0 I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.\u201d

And then the refrain rings out once again.\xa0 \u201cWhy, my soul are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.\u201d

This whole journey the psalmist takes from longing to remembering, to lament, to petition, to a vision of hope and restoration is exactly the Christian response to the often apparent silence of God.\xa0 It is a curious, counter-cultural way to live\u2014a way of faith and hope, not of sight.\xa0 CS Lewis says it well in his book, the Screwtape letters as the senior demon writes to his junior counterpart, saying:

\u201cOur cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.\u201d

With longing, memory, hope, and the support of one another, may this be our response as well.

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