When the soul is downcast and the deep is real
Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence. My God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from the hill Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me. Yahweh will command his loving kindness in the daytime. In the night his song shall be with me: a prayer to the God of my life. I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a sword in my bones, my adversaries reproach me, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?” Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him, the saving help of my countenance, and my God.
Why are you in despair, my soul? The question is aimed at you. Can you answer without flinching? The waves have swept over you. That is not faithless; it is factual.
Your first reflex is not hope but a false refuge: you try to answer the taunt 'Where is your God?' by manufacturing a feeling of his closeness. That effort keeps you thrashing under the waterfall. A downcast soul does not need a manufactured feeling. It needs a deeper word.
The deeper word: Deep calls to deep. Your despair calls to Christ, who let God's waves and billows sweep over him at the cross. Your deepest despair calls to a God who has gone deeper still. That is the saving help of his presence: he was forgotten in your place, so at night his song can be with you, a prayer to the God of your life.
Then say it to your own soul: 'Hope in God, for I shall still praise him.' Not if the waves stop, but still, in the water. Will you speak that to yourself tonight?
Your deepest despair calls to a God who has gone deeper still.
Lord, in the deep, let your song reach me before my hope can form words.
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