PANTING FOR GOD

Meditations from Psalm Forty-Two for the Week of Preparation Summer Communion Season.Bulletin Lord's Day 07/19/26

Commanded Lovingkindness

“Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.” (Psalm 42:8)

My dear congregation,

The week of panting ends in daylight. Psalm forty-two has been night work almost the whole way: tears for meat day and night, the deeps calling to one another, the cast-down soul taken in hand on Saturday evening. Then comes verse eight, the one verse in the psalm where the storm calms, and it belongs to this morning.

Weigh that word command before you come to the table. Lovingkindness is under strict orders. We speak as if mercy drifts, only settling where the weather is good. The psalmist knows better. Mercy in this verse is a servant, commissioned and sent out under authority. It has many names on its list. The centurion understood the grammar: I say to this man, Go, and he goeth (Matthew 8:9). When the LORD commands His lovingkindness, it will arrive.

And He has commanded at a table before. When Israel sneered, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness, the answer came in this same verb: he had commanded the clouds from above, and had rained down manna upon them to eat (Psalm 78:23–24). The bread and the cup before you stand here in that kind of ordering. Lovingkindness was commanded to this house, to this hour, to your seat. The hart that has panted all week finds the brook this morning.

Then the verse looks past sunset: and in the night his song shall be with me. The communicant goes home with a tune assigned for the night watches. The mercy of the daytime becomes the song of the night. Praise Him, dear one. All of it flows to the closing name, the sweetest in the psalm: my prayer unto the God of my life. After the tears, the taunts, and the billows, the possessive comes home once more. Come, and eat, and take the song with you into the night.

Your friend and pastor,

J. Lewis