Psalm 42: when your soul is downcast, talk to it
A devotion on Psalm 42 for the days when God feels far away, and on the psalmist's habit of speaking hope to his own soul instead of only listening to it.
Psalm 42:1–2Psalm 42:2Psalm 42:5Psalm 42:11Psalm 42:3Psalm 42:7Psalm 42:8Psalm 42:9John 7:37
Psalm 42 is one of the most honest prayers in the Bible. The person praying it is thirsty for God and cannot find Him. He cries at night. People ask him where his God has gone, and he has no answer. He remembers better days, and the memory makes the present worse. If you have ever felt that God went quiet on you, this psalm was written from inside that silence.
But the psalm does something more than describe the darkness. Twice the psalmist stops, turns, and speaks directly to his own soul. Why are you downcast? Put your hope in God. He does not wait for the feeling to change before he says it. He says it into the feeling. That small habit, talking to yourself rather than only listening to yourself, is the heart of this devotion. It will not make sorrow vanish. It will give you something to do with it.
The passage
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When shall I come and appear in God’s presence?
— Psalm 42:1–2
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.
— Psalm 42:5
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.
— Psalm 42:11
Thirst is where the psalm begins
The opening picture is a deer with its head down, panting, looking for water that is not there. This is not the calm longing of someone who has plenty and wants a little more. It is need. The psalmist is not thirsty for comfort or for answers. He is thirsty for God Himself, “the living God” (Psalm 42:2), and the word living matters. He is not looking for an idea. He is looking for a person who can be found and who, right now, cannot.
Thirst is a strange kind of gift. You only pant for water if you were made to drink. The ache the psalmist feels is evidence that his soul was built for God’s presence and knows the difference when it is missing. If you feel that ache today, you are not far from God. You are close enough to notice His absence.
The psalmist remembers, and it hurts
Then the tears. “My tears have been my food both day and night” (Psalm 42:3). He is not eating. He is crying instead. And all the while people keep asking him, “Where is your God?” (Psalm 42:3). The question may have been cruel, or it may have been sincere. Either way, it is the question he is also asking himself.
He does what many of us do in that place. He remembers. He recalls walking with the crowd to the house of God, singing, part of something joyful. It is a good memory, and it wounds him, because it is not now. Memory of past closeness can be a comfort or a knife, and here it is both.
Later he tells God the truth about it. “Why have You forgotten me?” (Psalm 42:9). He calls God his Rock in the same breath. That is not a contradiction. It is what faith sounds like when it is hurting. You can hold on to who God is while telling Him plainly that you cannot feel it.
He turns and speaks to his own soul
Now the turn. In verse 5 the psalmist stops addressing God and starts addressing himself. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me?
It is a real question, not a rebuke. He is not scolding his soul for feeling. He is asking it to explain itself, and in doing so he is stepping back from the feeling far enough to look at it. Then he gives it an instruction: put your hope in God. And a reason: I will yet praise Him. The word yet is small and stubborn. Not now, perhaps. But yet.
Much of the misery in a downcast season comes from letting the soul talk without interruption. It tells you that God has left, that nothing will change, that you are alone. Psalm 42 gives you permission to answer back. Not with a lie about how you feel, but with what you know: God is God, He has not changed, and there will be praise again.
The refrain comes back, and it has changed
Verse 11 repeats verse 5 almost word for word, and the almost is where the life is. In verse 5 he will praise God “for the salvation of His presence” (Psalm 42:5). In verse 11 he will praise Him as “my Savior and my God” (Psalm 42:11). The hope has become more personal. It has moved from what God gives to who God is.
In between, the psalmist has been through deep water. “Deep calls to deep” (Psalm 42:7), he says, and the waves have gone over him. And yet even there he notices that “at night His song is with me” (Psalm 42:8). The silence was not total. The feeling of God’s absence and the fact of God’s presence turned out to be two different things.
Jesus once stood up in the middle of a crowded feast and said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37). Psalm 42 is a thirsty psalm, and He is the answer to it. The living God the psalmist panted for came, in person, to be found.
When the downcast feeling will not lift
Some seasons of heaviness pass with time, prayer, and the company of others. Some do not, and a devotion is not the whole of what you may need. If the darkness has gone on for a long time, or if you have had thoughts of ending your life, please do not carry that by yourself. Talk to a pastor, a doctor, or someone you trust. In the US, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans are on 116 123. In Australia, Lifeline is 13 11 14. In Canada, call or text 988. For other countries, https://findahelpline.com lists local helplines. Reaching out is not a failure of faith. It is one of the ways God’s care reaches you.
Something to do today
Find a quiet moment and read verse 5 aloud, slowly, addressing your own soul by name. Then, in your own words, finish the sentence: I will yet praise Him, because. You do not need a long answer. One true thing is enough.
If you can, do it again tonight. The psalmist needed the refrain twice. You may need it more than that, and that is fine.
A question to sit with
When your soul tells you that God has forgotten you, what do you say back, and is it true?
A prayer
O God, my soul is thirsty and You feel far away. I have been crying more than eating, and I do not have an answer for the people who ask where You are. But You are my Rock even when I cannot feel You, and I will say so. Speak to my downcast soul through Your Word. Teach me to answer it with hope instead of letting it talk unchallenged. Let me hear Your song in the night. And bring me, in Your time, back to the place where I praise You, my Savior and my God. Amen.
Keep praying this psalm, keep reading the one that follows it, and let the people of your local church stand with you in the deep water. Nobody was meant to pant alone.