{"id":810,"date":"2011-06-20T11:53:39","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T16:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/?p=810"},"modified":"2011-06-20T11:53:39","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T16:53:39","slug":"longing-for-the-presence-of-god-the-psalms-in-our-worship-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/longing-for-the-presence-of-god-the-psalms-in-our-worship-34\/","title":{"rendered":"Longing for the Presence of God: The Psalms in our Worship 34"},"content":{"rendered":"

Longing for the absent lover — this is the stuff of romance.\u00a0 Memories of the smells and sounds of the lost relationship, memories of times shared together, memories of the last moment of touch all cascade through the mind of the one who longs for the return of the one who has gone away.\u00a0 Longing for the absent lover also describes the life of faith, for the elusive God whose presence brings life seems distant and yet ever present.\u00a0 Out of the tension created by this absence that is not absence comes something we call faith.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is fitting, then, that the second book of the Psalter opens with\u00a0 Psalms 42-43, once a single poem only later split apart.\u00a0 Unlike many laments, which concentrate on either physical or social suffering, this one concentrates upon the source of suffering, the absence of God.\u00a0 Thus it opens with the arresting image of the thirsty deer anxiously searching for water, and closes (43:5) with an address to the very life force of the psalmist: “why are you prostrate, O my soul, and why are you troubled upon me?\u00a0 Trust Elohim, for I will yet praise him.\u00a0 Deliverance (comes from) my ‘Face’ and my God.”\u00a0 (“Face” is sometimes a name for God, or more often, for an aspect or manifestation of God, so I am offering here a very literal translation of the Hebrew text.)\u00a0 These verses bracket the lament material between them, thus moving the reader from an expression of desire to one of confidence in the Almighty.<\/p>\n

The core of the psalm works by setting up a series of contrasts: times of celebration versus times of disquiet and anxiety, drought-stricken land versus gushing springs, and mourning for God’s absence versus hope in God’s imminent presence.\u00a0 The spiritual dryness and isolation characterizing life without God elicit metaphors of ecological dryness and social isolation, a nice poetic turn.\u00a0 More to the point, the refrain that recurs in 42:6 and 12 (5 and 11 in English) as well as 43:5 works to undermine, or perhaps to place in its proper perspective, the expressions of isolation and despair.<\/p>\n

Finally, it’s not very surprising that the opening of this psalm should have been set to music in our own times (my church frequently sings at least two different tunes set to it).\u00a0 Our age senses keenly the absence of God.\u00a0 Choked by war, fenced in by economic insecurity, despairing before ecological degradation and leaders’ denial of the plain facts, we all sense the absence of the transcendent One.\u00a0 This psalm, therefore, does not belong merely to a past age.\u00a0 It belongs to us, as well.\u00a0 For just as the psalm details lost confidence in ancient verities, so also it sings about a God who transcends all the truths about God and has a life beyond our ideas, no matter how cherished.\u00a0 The psalmist longs for God to be God so that we all can be human beings.\u00a0 I’d like to join the ancient poet in this timeless desire.\u00a0 Perhaps you would too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Longing for the absent lover — this is the stuff of romance.\u00a0 Memories of the smells and sounds of the lost relationship, memories of times shared together, memories of the last moment of touch all cascade through the mind of the one who longs for the return of the one who has gone away.\u00a0 Longing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLonging for the Presence of God: The Psalms in our Worship 34 - ACU Graduate School of Theology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/longing-for-the-presence-of-god-the-psalms-in-our-worship-34\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Longing for the Presence of God: The Psalms in our Worship 34 - 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