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 by 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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