I have lived Psalm 42.
On a Sunday night after an evening service back in July 2003, I met with the core leadership team of the church where I was serving as a Worship Pastor and said, ‘I think it’s best that I step down’.
In the wake of a crumbling, rapidly dissolving marriage and the seemingly sudden, rapid and brutal destruction of most things I held dear (and gave me great pleasure), I was a basket case.
On the Monday that followed the Sunday, a close friend SMS’d me saying ‘you should read Psalm 42…it was written for you’. Well, it was written for all of us, but when I read it, and re-read it, over the ensuing weeks, months and years, came back to it again and again, I realised that I was certainly one of those for whom it was written.
The unexpected joy of those months and years (much of which I would not wish on anyone) was a fresh encounter of Jesus’ glorious grace that continued to reach to me when ‘tears were my food day and night’. I have journals from back then, it was pretty grim. Yet the beauty in the breakdown is that when the building falls down you have a rare opportunity to examine the foundations upon which you’ve built your life and your identity. I discovered that I needed to dig these up as well. I needed to lay a foundation that was on Christ alone.
In the aftermath, I’ve discovered that this isn’t a one-time work either. It’s a continual repentance and realisation that it’s only by his grace that we approach the throne of God. It sure changes your focus when your reading Ephesians 2!
“Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me”, David writes. Jesus calls us to deeper places in Him, but they’re not always pleasant places. They’re sometimes places where angels fear to tread.
Have you ever met a shallow person? Are they where you go when it all goes pear-shaped? Nope, probably not (apart from, perhaps, some light-hearted relief!). You probably want to seek out those who have gone the distance, sought and cultivated wisdom, spent time in the pit, been exiled to the desert, and somehow kept walking towards God. Sometimes stumbling, sometimes dragging themselves, sometimes stuck in a foetal position for nights on end while the long mending of the soul and spirit begins. But a person who can say with absolute confidence: ‘I will hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God’.
I could write for a while on Psalm 42…it’s been the source of great hope for me. For I, not unlike David was:
always at the head of the worshiping crowd, right out in front, Leading them all, eager to arrive and worship,
Shouting praises, singing thanksgiving—celebrating, all of us, God’s feast!
God doesn’t leave us in a time of trouble. Truth is, he draws near. I know he drew near to me. And he draws near the broken-hearted with the hope of restoration and reformation. Not necessarily restoration to the former shape – cause, oftentimes, that would be inviting a repetition of disaster. But he reforms us as he sees fit.
Jeremiah 18:3 gives us a beautiful picture of who we are in the hands of our creator:
So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
The Psalms continually remind us that the full range of the human experience and condition is within the hands of a loving Saviour whose grace doesn’t run out when we do…that’s when he has the chance to get busy with grace.
I’m another pot now. One that it seemed best for the the potter to shape. And he’s still busy shaping me. Plenty to do, a plenty more repentance, obedience and submission to come on my behalf.
Thankyou Jesus that you take our jars of clay and deposit your treasure into them that you might be glorified. Thankyou.
– Simon Elliott