PANTING FOR GOD

Meditations from Psalm Forty-Two for the Week of Preparation Summer Communion Season-Thursday

I Went with the Multitude

“When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.” (Psalm 42:4)

The psalmist remembers. Far north in the land of Jordan, within earshot of Hermon’s floods, shut away from the sanctuary, he closes his eyes and walks the old road. He recalls the singing procession going up, the congregation thickening as he goes up the hill, the psalms growing louder as the LORD’s house comes into view. I had gone with the multitude. I went with them to the house of God. And that memory grips him. When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me.

There is a use of memory in preparation, and Thursday is a good day for it. Go back tonight to your own first Lord’s table you ever sat at, and how you got there. How, perhaps, your hands trembled. How your eyes were watered. That first communion season when the Word found you out. When your cold heart caught fire without warning. God Himself keeps such anniversaries over His people: “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness” (Jeremiah 2:2). If He has not forgotten the day of your espousals, it ill becomes us to lose the memory.

Because to the soul that has wandered since, memory is more than the good old days. It’s a kind of road home, with the father waiting, and his feast of love prepared. The counsel of the risen Christ to the fallen in heart was: “remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works” (Revelation 2:5). The prodigal came to himself in the far country, how? By remembering the abundance of bread in his father’s house. And that memory carried him all the way home. If this communion season has awoken an old memory that shames the present, follow the memory home. The table this Lord’s Day receives returning rememberers.

Notice too, with whom he went: with the multitude. We have to admit that part of the sweetness in memory is the company that we enjoyed it with. He never once went to the house of God alone. And neither have you. Your pew has shoulders next to yours. The psalm rises best in a chorus, than ever by yourself. Because God has bound up the joy of His worship within the communion of saints. And just now, some of you are remembering the many of our number, now gone. There is a voice missing in our chorus, a hand held long, along this road. When you sit at the table Sabbath morning, remember that the communion of saints has an upper and lower part. Our table is in the lower end of the banqueting hall whose far end is out of sight, with a veil in between. They kept holyday with you once. They will keep the Eternal Day with you, world without end. Not long now, and all the elect will be behind that holy veil.

A holyday is coming. Three days from now you will, Lord willing, rise, dressed for a wedding, and go with a multitude (small as we are), to the house of God. And there, the thing your exiled, thirsty soul longs for, will freely be given to you. Do everything this week except take it for granted.

Your friend and pastor,

J. Lewis