PANTING FOR GOD
Meditations from Psalm Forty-Two for the Week of Preparation Summer Communion Season,2026-Saturday
Preaching to Your Own Soul
“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.” (Psalm 42:5)
Twice in this psalm, and a third time in the psalm that follows it, the writer stops everything and turns in on himself. He has been listening to his soul all day, its sighing, its arguments, its taunts, from both the flesh and the enemy. Now he stands up and enters the pulpit of his heart: Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Experimental preaching to a congregation of one.
It is Saturday evening, and there may be no better work in all the week than this: stop listening to your soul for a while, and preach to it.
Follow the psalmist’s outline. He begins with a question, so the soul might answer it. “Why?” On what grounds, exactly. Interrogated souls have a way of melting under question. Dejection in the dark is arrogant, with a swelling rage that fills the heart. Is that you tonight? Then sit your Saturday-night heavinesses in the pew, and make them give you reasons. Say to them, out loud, why? Most of that congregation will dissolve under Christ-centered examination. And the ones that remain, the real ones, the sin, the loss, the longing, the trial, every one of them has an answer lodged in the wounds of Christ. Do you not know, dear one? His sufficiency will be spread out before you in the morning.
Then comes the application: hope thou in God! He commands his soul as a master commands a ship. The child of God is at complete liberty to give his soul gospel orders, and see them carried out. And then comes the doxology of faith: I shall yet praise him. That word yet is the bravest little word in all the Psalter. The sky shows nothing this evening. Well, faith writes praise into the forecast, because faith reads the promise, in spite of the circumstances. Take the word yet to bed with you. Whatever this season has been, however the week of preparation has gone, bitter or sweet, shallow or full: I shall yet praise him.
And now a little gem kept for the last evening of the week. Set the two refrains side by side. Verse five hopes in God “for the help of his countenance.” Verse eleven, the same refrain ends, saying “who is the health of my countenance, and my God.” Help crossed the distance and became health. The light traveled from God’s countenance to the psalmist’s face. He began by looking to God for help, and by the end, help had reached him and changed his countenance, and the possessive came home to his heart: and my God. That is what beholding Christ does. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Tomorrow that countenance will be lifted upon you at His table, according to the old blessing: “the LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (Numbers 6:26). Dear one, sit where the light can reach you. Communicants have been known by their faces on sacrament eve. Moses came down from the mount not knowing that his face shone. So end the week as the psalm ends. Preach hope to your cast-down soul, command it to look up. Go to sleep with the last two words of the refrain on your lips, because by tomorrow night, God willing, you will say from experience: my God.
The streams are very near now.
Your friend and pastor,
J. Lewis