This week Colleen walked out of her office (a reclaimed bedroom) and past my office (the kitchen table) and said, “You should look at Psalm 42—there’s some good stuff in there.” 

“What good stuff are you looking at?” I asked. 

“Just take a look!”.  

She was right.

“These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.”

These guys (not David) knew what it was to sing their lungs out, to be in the crowd of worshipers, to be all together … but not at this moment. When they wrote this, the doors to the house of God were locked or smashed and the crowds were a long way from home. Something was going on in their day that had everyone hiding and alone. Sounds familiar.

By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.

These worshipers knew God was present when the band was loud and the crowd was spilling into the foyer. They also knew the love of God when the crowd had whittled down to one—him, her—at home, alone.

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in the God, for I will yet praise Him, My Saviour and my God.

Our Saviour and our God!

I’m praying that you would hear His song whatever head-space or heart-space you are in. I’m praying that you would “see the future” and the promise of His Goodness would sustain you and lift your spirits. 

You should know that I am praying we don’t go back to the way we were, because that would be a miss. I’m praying, right now, in our pseudo-separation, that our Lord is singing new songs into us, deepening our understanding of His love for us, and growing our love for each other and for the world. I’m praying that we would walk away from the useless things we are wrongly invested in and that we would lay them aside to become the ‘light of the world and the salt of  the earth’ (Matthew 5) that he’s called us to be.

Praying with you today. 

Andrew