Psalms 42:7-11
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
8 By day the LORD directs his love,
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 go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
11 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. (TNIV)
Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your waterfalls. The pastors from America were stunned—here, far from their comfortable homes and offices, their richly designed sanctuaries and worship centers, here, in the depths of material and spiritual poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, they were seeing water being drawn from a swamp, for there was nowhere else to receive water. In their shock, they swore to one of the village elders to return, to help bring wells and safe drinking water, and the elder said, “Many of you have promised us such things in the name of this Jesus. None of them ever do.” Dry not only was the village, dry was the spiritual life of the people who had given up on the name of Jesus. And how understandable of them—the Psalmist is not describing God as the water of the swamp, no, God is the water of waterfalls, of waves and surfs that engulf us in the presence of God’s love. Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your waterfalls!
The Psalmist, like the village elder, is in a state of spiritual desert, and he is longing for, dreaming of, praying for, communion with God. And I do not mean in the personal relationship type of communion that we speak so much of these days, the “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your PERSONAL Savior” type of questions. No, communion in its richest sense, to be surrounded by a family, a community, a great multitude of believers, to be swept up in the embrace of a community, to be engulfed by the presence of the Lord not as a hermit, but as a person who is a part of something far greater than themselves.
The holidays are supposed to do exactly that for us. Even if all year long, we’ve been an “I,” or a “me,” the holidays are supposed to make people an “us” by giving us a cause to reconnect with family and friends. And…it does not always quite work out that way. We doubt if Christmas really will bring us any joy and cheer—Christ came to us 2,000 years ago, and we’re still muddling along in a broken and fragile world. We expose ourselves to our own doubts, and those doubts, they have so, so much power over us. Look at what the Psalmist says—after being ripped open to doubt by his enemies, his enemies who taunt, “Where is your God?” He feels an ache, a pain and emptiness, he feels it in his bones—you feel something like that in your bones, you know that things are not the way that they are supposed to be. And what is worse, we, like the Psalmist, respond to the outside world, telling us that there is no God, by even daring to entertain that notion ourselves, even if only for the briefest of moments. Far from the temple, far from the sanctuary, far from wherever God is present in his life, the Psalmist openly wonders, “Where is my God?” And far from the spirit of Christmas, far from the joy and celebration of the holiday season, we too would well be forgiven for openly wondering, “Where is my God?” Engulfed not by the waters of God’s love but by the fierce breakers of unemployment, and addiction, and hardship, and loss, we wait to see if it gets any better, if the waters will recede and we can again walk instead of crawl and run instead of limp. Deep calls to deep, at the thunder of your waterfalls!
The beauty of this Psalm, though, is that we do not know what causes the Psalmist’s abrupt change of heart in these last two verses. Suddenly, without explanation or hesitation, the Psalmist asks himself, why be so downcast? Why feel so empty? This was not…it is not…a sweeping of his pain and hurt under the proverbial rug. Because it is not pretending that things are better in the here and now—it is a promise that it will get better—for I will YET praise Him, my Savior and my God. I will survive this—my demons, my enemies, the ache and the pain, I will survive all of this to praise my God yet again. The simple answer is that this is a show of faith. The longer answer, though, is that it shows a specific kind of faith—the faith that after death comes resurrection, that after loss comes rebirth, that after the heat and fire of the desert, there is a balm in Gilead, the kind of faith that will bend, and will buckle, but that will not completely break. And in the Psalmist’s case, the faith is that after the thirst and dryness of loneliness and heartbreak, there will be the soothing, powerful water of God’s limitless grace. Deep calls to deep, at the thunder of your waterfalls!
As for the village of the elder who had justifiably lost faith in the church, well, they did indeed end up building a clean water well. The swamp, as a source of water, is no more, but it is nonetheless a reminder, even a reassurance, in a way, that such faith is never as easy as it often looks in the eyes of the born-again believer or the cradle Christian. Faith is, and always will be, work. And because of that, in the grand scheme of things, in the scope and grandeur of the entire world, there are so many other dry spiritual deserts of intimidating size. But, sometimes, it is enough, just enough, to offer praise to God that in the midst of that desert, in the witness of all of the shortage and famine of food, shelter, and love, that the world can still be made a better place. I believe it still, simply because deep does call to deep at the thunder, at the grace, at the mercy, at the awesomeness of God’s presence. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
December 22, 2011
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