Dcn Tom Lindell

My Brothers and Sisters,

When I offer a sermon, I always use the first line of Psalm 42:

[1] As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God.

There is just something idyllic that invokes my imagination. This bucolic image takes me to another place that is quiet and peaceful. But then I fall into the mode of a desire to quote only that portion of the psalm which sustains me. I need to dig deeper into the rest of the psalm for greater meaning.

The psalm was likely composed by a man who expresses in deeply moving words the suffering he has had to endure. The psalmist was probably living in exile, lamenting what he can now only recollect. In that pagan environment he is challenged by those who witness his suffering say:

[3] Where now is your God?

[4] I pour out my soul when I think on these things; remembering what it was like when he was in community with those who gathered in the house of God.

Reality returns when he asks: [6,7] Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? And why are you so disquieted within me? Put your trust in God; for I will yet give thanks to him, who is the help of my countenance, and my God. Yet he continues to put his trust in God, recalling what it was like in his homeland where he could go to the Temple for worship with friends.

After continued angst at having been forgotten and oppressed by enemies who mock him [11-13], at the end of the day he concludes with the familiar refrain quoted above [6,7], ending with

Put your trust in God; for I will yet give thanks to him, who is the help of my countenance, and my God.

Psalm 43 which follows was also apparently composed by the same poet who wrote Psalm 42. This short psalm also concludes with the same refrain cited above.

I was motivated to create an etching/emboss hoping to capture the tranquility of the first line of Psalm 42:

—Dcn Tom