This song is based off Psalm 42. The psalmist was downcast
due to some trying and difficult times in his life. He may have been in exile.
He was suffering greatly. The storms and tempests of his life were sweeping
over him like a flood. He felt forgotten by God. He questioned why he must
endure such suffering. He was bordering on serious depression. Satan was
attacking him, putting doubts in his mind: “Where is your God? Why has he not
come to rescue you?”
The psalmist thus counseled himself. He countered each doubt
with the truth of who God is, and with the truth of the psalmist’s past
relationship with God; how God was his only hope; how God was his Savior
(fulfilled in Jesus Christ) and his Lord; how the Lord sent forth his love into
the psalmist’s life day-by-day; and how at night God’s song was always with
him. God had always been there for him before, and he would not leave him now.
And, he remembered that God was his Rock (a name for Jesus Christ), i.e. his
fortress and his deliverer. In other words, the psalmist chose to put on the
armor of God with which to fight off Satan’s attacks (lies) and to put on the
truth of who God is, and of all that he has done.
The psalmist intensely longed for his intimate relationship
with God to be restored, i.e. for him to sense God’s holy presence abiding with
him. He compared his intense thirst for God and for his righteousness to that
of a deer panting for water. He longed to meet with God in his temple. He cried
so many tears over his painful situation that it almost seemed as though his
tears had been his food day and night. Men mocked him in his situation, thus
reinforcing the thought in his mind that he had been deserted by God. Yet he
chose to pour out his soul to God in prayer, to counter those lies with the truth,
and, in spite of all his suffering, to put his hope and trust in God.
Why So Downcast?
/ An Original Work / December 21, 2012
Based off Psalm 42
Why so downcast,
O my soul,
And why so disturbed
Now within me?
Put your hope
In Jesus Christ,
For I will praise His name.
He’s my Savior
And my God,
So therefore I’ll
Remember Him through
Storms and tempests
Sweeping o’er me.
Still I’ll praise His name.
Put your hope in God.
By day the Lord
Sends forth His love.
In the night
His song is with me.
I pray to the
God of my life.
I will praise His name.
I say to God my Rock,
“Why must I be called
To suffer this way?”
Foes attack me;
Satan sneering.
Still I’ll praise my God.
Put your hope in Him.
As a deer pants
For the waters,
So my soul pants
For You, O God.
My soul thirsts for
God who’s living.
When can I meet Him?
My tears have been
My food at night,
When men say,
“So, where is your God?”
I pour out my
Soul to my God.
I’ll still praise His name.
Shout with joy to Him.
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