As the Deer

“As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you , O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and appear before God?  My Tears have been my food, day and night, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’  These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.  Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.”

Growing up as a child of the 1980’s, we used to sing the song, “As the Deer”, just about every Sunday (at least that’s how I remember it) and since the worship band at my youth group consisted of one guy who was learning how to play the guitar, this song got a lot of play there as well. As cheesy as it might seem to us now, that song was always one of my favorites.  As a teenager trying to figure out what it meant to be a follower of Christ, it always helped me refocus on what was really important.

As I meditate on these verses today, it strikes me how much this passage, and that song, are relevant to us in this time.  The Psalmist is writing about being cut off from God’s people and struggling to connect with the living God.  While we don’t need to be “at church” to worship God, He has made us, as part of His sovereign plan, to be a community (Rom 12:5).  To need each other and desire fellowship with one another (Act 2:42).  To be isolated in our homes and not have the ability to gather and worship together is painful and it’s ok to grieve.  But we have a greater hope.

Our hope is in the promise of our God, we will worship together again (Rev 7:9-10).  We will gather in the sanctuary and we will sing Holy, Holy, Holy to the Lord God Almighty.  While things on earth are uncertain, God remains on the throne and in complete and total control (Dan 4:35; Neh 9:6).