the Deep Psalm 42

My tears have been my food

    day and night,

while people say to me all day long,

    “Where is your God?”"

-Psalm 42:3

"I remember when, I remember when I lost my mind!" and "Does that make me crazy, probably!"   I belt Gnrals Barkley's anthem,  as I spazz dance around the kitchen to shake off  my two year's old tantrum complete with whining and screeching and the yelling fist-throwing fight between my seven year old and four and half year I just witnessed simultaneously with an exasperated sigh.  Then the verse, "Who do you think you are? Ha-ha-ha, bless your soul, You really think you're in control, well -I think you're crazy"  inspired  my stressed out soliloquy into a theological symphony trumpeting, "No, I am not in control and never will be."

"Why, my soul, are you downcast?

    Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

    for I will yet praise him,

    my Savior and my God."

-Pslam 42:5

     In such a sharp environment east of Eden, we sinners shatter. And in the most sacred relationships of marriage and family the shards scatter. Little girls whine, toddlers tantrum, siblings fight, dads yell in frustration and moms weep with overwhelmness (also with sense of inadequacies). The sorrows echo outside immediate  into extended family: grandmothers' health deteriorates, aunts and uncles abandon their faith and deaths occur (some slowly, others suddenly).  With so many pieces thrown about, a harden heart seems safest. Yet, only a soft bleeding heart vulnerable to bruising reflects the God-man who dared to die a passionate death. And only at the foot of the crucifix I gather the scattered shards of my own  and my loved ones' sorrows, surrendering to His wounds. Only there, the master carpenter stains and frames me into a saint, a window to illuminate His light.

  "Deep calls to deep

    in the roar of your waterfalls;

all your waves and breakers

    have swept over me."

-Psalm 42:7

      The shadows haunt memorial day weekend for me as I remember my older sister's birthday (forever now 27, she would've turned 34).  Traditionally most gather with families besides water (pools, lakes, oceans, etc), so befitting for a weekend for memorializing. Water holds memory.

In the water cycle the process of evaporation(water heating up into vapor/steam moving into the atmosphere), condensation (gathering to into clouds), precipitation (water vapor cooling and descending as droplets such as rain, snow, sleet and/or hail) and erosion (water moving back towards creeks, streams and rivers into the ocean eventually) repeated since the first day of God's Creation. Thus, water used for Saint John's baptism, and that Jesus drank still exsist on our earth today. Water heals and cleanses, soothes and restores- and through His Living Water we finally forget the feeling of thirst. Yet, in such a dry and weary land so much thirstiness plagues us.  So only in prayer may the springs of life welling up within us bursts forth.

"By day the Lord directs his love,

    at night his song is with me—

    a prayer to the God of my life."

-Psalm 42:8

   So I lay down my sorrow-filled shards, sinking deep into the embrace of the One who sanctifies and smooths my sharpened heart, soothed by the hope of resurrection and restoration.  In this process of suffering for santification I allow space for the mess within me (my own fears and insecurities), and around me (my loved ones large emotions stressing and straining my senses). For only thirsty we find living water to sustain us until we flow into the sea.

"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God."

-Pslam 42:1