PANTING FOR GOD

Meditations from Psalm Forty-Two for the Week of Preparation Summer Communion Season,2026-Wednesday

Tears for Meat

“My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?” (Psalm 42:3)

Here is a strange diet. Meat in the old tongue meant food, and the psalmist says he has been living on tears like others live on bread. Day and night. Tears at appointed mealtimes, and tears in between. Some of you know the menu well. There are times when sorrow is served three-square, and you sit down to it because it’s all you have.

And over the exotic meal comes the old taunt: where is thy God? Does it come from within or without? The enemy has always asked afflicted believer this, with a particular satisfaction in it that it troubles them. If your God is so real, why this, why now, why you? Jesus’ enemies asked it in its most potent form at Golgotha: “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now” (Matthew 27:43). But it comes from within too. Which is worse. Unbelief will speak to your conscience at two in the morning, in your voice. And the question is never better asked, and knows no better time to ask, then over a weeping saint. Where is He, then? You prayed. You waited. Where is thy God?

But look closely, the answer is hiding in plain sight. Notice these tears have a direction. The psalmist weeps toward a face; the whole psalm is spoken to the very God he is taunted about. Grief without God falls in many directions. This man’s grief fell somewhere precious, and he knew it: “put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?” (Psalm 56:8). God keeps the tears of His people the way vintners keep wine. Personally known; remembered, bottled, labeled year by year. And not one drop has reached the ground. The mocker asks where is your God. The direction of your weeping answers, near enough to catch them all.

Yet look at what the tears did for him. They were his very food. They kept him alive until better fare came. Dear one, there is a kind of sorrow that starves the soul, the sorrow of the world that worketh death (2 Cor. 7:10). All bitter and no sustenance. And there is a sorrow that nourishes: grief over sin, longing after an absent God, the missing of love toward Christ at a time you can’t quite describe. Many a soul has lived on that diet. But only for a time. Until the good manna falls. If your preparation week seems to be more lament than loveliness, take heart; you are dining on psalmist food. And it carried him to the sanctuary.

Then remember who else ate at this table. He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears (Hebrews 5:7). He wept at a grave in Bethany and over a city that would kill Him. Your Host this coming Lord’s Day knows the taste of tears for food, and He has pledged Himself to the mourners: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). Tears for food for now. Bread and wine on Sunday.

Your friend and pastor,

J. Lewis