A Song of Remembrance, For a Time like This

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.” Psa 42:5 

“For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.” Rom 14:7 

The psalmist mourned the great thirst he felt for his God. He missed Him. As the hart pants after the water brooks, so did the psalmist pant after his God.

Why?

His soul was in great distress. He was oppressed. His enemies had ridden like a torrential river over his head. Waves and billows of sorrows beat hard against him. He didn’t have peace. For solace he had turned to the one who was closest to him. He turned to his soul. And as in the night, when a man is under the oppression of the darkness surrounding him, he gave vent to the other dark oppression he felt inside his heart.

His drought for his God ravaged him. He missed Him. Where was He? The sense of desertion reeked heavily upon him.

Such a drought, and such questions as wreaked havoc inside the psalmist’s mind, might well explain the oppression currently reigning in our hearts and minds at a time like this in our country. The disquiet is pregnant and palpable. The mind is cast down. It is caught in that boundless itinerant of mundane and wearisome expostulation. The night is long and there is no gleam of light in the distance.

The soul is thirsty for the departed ones. The soul is thirsty for news. Why did this happen? Where was God? Lives have been destroyed. Properties lost. A gloom hangs over our lives like the Sword of Damocles. Whom will it crush down next? A plague has visited us, and the landscape of the heart is dry and scorched.

Questions like sea waves pummel incessantly against the shores of the mind. The answers are swept back to the sea before we reach them.

The leaves have sweated and they have cried together with us. The grass has stared in shock, and withered. Birds have fallen silent and the animals have dug themselves in their burrows. Thorns have pierced the heart and it is bleeding.

The vintage has failed us again in our land. The vine has dried up. The wine is spent and the vaults are dry. And mirth has flown out of the window.

The House of God

At a time like this it is better not to keep silent. At a time like this it is better to be bold and hold converse with the soul - as the psalmist did. He may be the only friend who understands us at a time like this.

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” The psalmist had been in tears day and night. The matters before him were hard, deep and heavy. He cried to his soul – and by extension he cried to his God – “Why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning [day and night]?”

“O my God, my soul is cast down within me.” Talk to me, please God, he seems to say. Say something. At a time like this God does say something after all. God does not keep silent. Listen, listen very carefully and you will hear Him. God never leaves us alone especially at a time like this. “A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.”

The psalmist knew this. Knew that in his muted communion with his soul, it was actually God who was in action inside him. That the words he spoke were really the words God had given him to speak.

Therefore he says, “When I remember these things…” God called him to remember. The psalmist was awakened. God swept through him like a flood. Then the psalmist saw, and the psalmist remembered. God lit his torch inside him, and His powerful light dispelled the darkness inside him. The psalmist began to see, and he began to remember things – and he began to hope again.

When I Remember These Things…

What did he remember? He had gone with the multitude to the house of God once. Another psalmist had said, “When I thought to know [these things], it was too painful for me; Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I [these things]” (Ps 73:16-17).

God is not unrighteous to forget your pain. God always answers when we call on Him, especially when we pay Him a visit in his own house. His word never goes out in vain but that it must accomplish his purpose. How does one get acquainted with such knowledge? Go to the house of God. After his plagues, after his pain, the psalmist went to the house of God and there he found his answer.  There he found peace.

He remembered God had not left him alone. He remembered the love of God, the kindness of God “in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.” The psalmist was confident his prayer – and his dialogue with his soul – was not in vain. He knew God – speaking through his soul – would answer him.

 

The famous psalmist had come to such a remembrance once; he had come to such a knowledge once too. And it left him in great awe. Listen to his words:

O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

 Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

What sort of knowledge was that?

That God loved him. That God knew everything about him – knew his loss, his consternation, his pain – that God loved him still, that God was still on the throne; that God knew and was working against what had happened. That the wicked will be found, that they will appear before Him; that they will answer to their charge one day…

Paul knew too, knew that even now God was in action; and the Holy Spirit, our Comforter and our help was in action too; “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together [with us] until now.” We are gladdened that God has not left us alone without a comforter. “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom 8:26). 

Our souls may be withered but our God is still strong. He will order our strength, He has commanded our strength. Therefore we will not be afraid, cried the psalmist. When the wicked, even our enemies and our foes come upon us to eat our flesh, they will stumble and fall. Though a host should encamp against us, our hearts shall not fear: though war should rise against us, in this will we be confident: That our God lives, and it is Him who fights for us. Our God will not leave us nor forsake us.

There is always joy in the house of God. It is huge; it conflates and swallows all our other passions, like pain and sorrow. The joy of God does that. It becomes our strength. Go to the house of God and discover for yourself that joy – and that knowledge. And that peace.

In the end nothing will be left unanswered. All will be made plain. The doers of good will get their reward. The wicked will receive their comeuppance. In the end it will happen. All things will be made plain. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Soon the light will appear. The darkness will be dispelled, and “until the day dawn, and the day star arise in [our] hearts.” “Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD.”  For the Lord is not slack concerning his promises, “as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9).

Therefore we are confident of this promise: that in the end everything will become new. The old will pass away. So even now the hymn of the psalmist is becoming new. From “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” to “Why art thou so joyous, O my soul?”

The knowledge of Jesus Christ makes such a song – and such hope - possible. So one can end his song like the psalmist ended his, resting in this knowledge; “for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”

In the end such knowledge made all things possible in the psalmist’s sight. Such knowledge can make all things possible in your sight too, no matter what the circumstances - no matter if it is a time like this. Do you believe that?

God be merciful unto us, and God bless us; and God cause His face to shine upon us, and keep us. God be gracious unto us, and give us peace.