Day 1: Alone and Confused

Focus

Reflect on today’s reading using these questions.

1. What is the writer feeling? Why is he feeling this way?
2. What does the writer feel when remembering a happier, more spiritually vibrant time (v 4)?

Devotion

In this psalm, the writer from the clan of Korah expresses a deep thirst for God that has yet to be satisfied. The writer desires to be in God’s presence the way a person would long for a cool drink of water after long days in the desert. Some think the writer is living in exile, cut off from the possibility of worshiping God at the Temple. Bystanders jeer that God is not present and not coming to his rescue. The memory of better times of celebration and worship brings only more pain. This passage ends with an anguished question that sounds something like, “What is wrong with me? Snap out of it!” The writer tries to exhort himself to trust God. We will see in tomorrow’s reading that trying to force himself to feel better does not work.

Connect

1. Have you ever felt cut off from the presence of God?
2. How do you respond to unfulfilled spiritual longings?

Have you ever found yourself in great anguish and so cut off from a previous experience of joy and celebration? You groan for relief, but it does not come. You wonder if YOU are the problem, especially when others try to ignore your pain or explain it away. You tell yourself to try harder to find joy and trust in God. But can you will yourself to feel close to God again? Memories of the past when you felt God’s presence only serve to deepen your current pain.

If you have felt like the writer, you are not alone. The words in this psalm are a reminder that God cares about our struggles and provides ways to express our pain to Him.

Dig deeper

Psalm 42 and 43 together form a single lament psalm in the Hebrew Bible. Laments make up approximately one-third of the Psalms. In these psalms, the writers pour out their pain before God as an act of worship and conversation with God.

In Psalm 88:1–4 (GNT), another lament, the writer expresses the similar cry of pain to God. Consider how God gives us permission to express our faith even in our deepest pain:

LORD God, my savior, I cry out all day,
and at night I come before you.
Hear my prayer;
listen to my cry for help!

So many troubles have fallen on me
that I am close to death.
I am like all others who are about to die;
all my strength is gone.

———

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