When God Seems as Absent as Baby Formula (A Meditation on Psalm 42)
by Joe Leavell
Picture by Joe Leavell (Toilet Paper Shortage in 2020)
A meditation on Psalm 42
I remember how I felt during the height of the pandemic when I first ventured out of the house to find some toilet paper. I spent two hours looking over the completely bare shelves of several locations wondering what on earth had happened to these disaster zones we once called stores! It soon became hopelessly evident that I wasn’t going to find any TP that day, and I gave up in defeat. I gave up any search as an exercise in the absurd.
It may not have been toilet paper for you, but a lot of us seem to have a similar hunting story to tell over the last few years.
I can’t imagine what it must be like for those who have needed to feed their baby. It has been especially difficult to find certain formulas for sensitive stomachs and special formulas. It must be so hard to struggle going from store to store hoping that the next one will have what they need. Unfortunately, we’ve grown somewhat accustomed to having to track down some of the items that our family may need but baby formula may be one of the most difficult shortages because of the pressing nature of caring for our children.
Panting for Water
I remember in my own fruitless hunt for toilet paper, there was one song that kept percolating in my mind over and over. It was the chorus, “As the Deer.” Anyone else remember that chorus? The song reflects Psalm 42:1, which says,
“As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.”
In my mind though, I kept singing, “As the quarantined panteth for the toilet paper so my soul longeth after…” Yeah…it started to sound strangely sacrilegious, so I stopped humming.
My apologies if I’ve ruined the song for you next time they’re out of a product when you’re at the store.
The sentiment itself, however, is not too far off from what the psalmist is expressing in Psalm 42. When you hear the chorus sung, you get the impression that the writer is just so in love with God that he pines for Him like a deer pants for water. He loves God and just longs for Him with such an emotional expression of love because God alone is what His heart desires.
That sentiment isn’t what the Psalmist is expressing in the slightest.
There are helpful hints further in the Psalm when he says phrases like,
“My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’”
and,
“I say to God, my rock: ‘Why have you forgotten me?’”
This poem is not the picture of someone who is writing an obsessing love song to God. It is a visual picture of a deer in the middle of the desert that is literally dying of thirst and can’t find water! The words of Psalm 42 are the picture of hopeless anguish.
Think of the mother going from store to store with a crying baby who is hungry, desperately searching for formula and coming up empty. This Psalm is a cry of frustrated desperation rather than some warm teen-age infatuation.
This Psalmist is someone who has been searching for evidence of God’s presence in his turmoil and he isn’t finding it anywhere he looks. He was feeling completely abandoned and has reached the point of desperation in his time of need, and it seems as if God is nowhere to be found. Not only does God seem completely absent, his enemies are taunting him with it saying, “Where is your God?”
What Are We Looking For?
Maybe you are a Christian who is struggling to understand what God is doing right now or maybe you have felt completely abandoned by God for a very long time. You keep looking for Him and the hits keep coming one after the other and in no sphere of life do you see or feel that God is present or working.
No matter how much you are reminded of His promise to never leave or forsake you, you may feel like you have searched everywhere for evidence of God’s loving care and have come up empty again and again and now have reached the place of desperation.
While the Bible never minimizes the psalmist’s circumstances, it also never indicates that the pain of human emotion accurately reflects the truth of God’s absence from the redeemed. While the Psalmist felt desperate, the reality of God’s faithful love and care never actually stopped. God did not forget him for even a single moment.
Why then is it often so hard to find God’s presence in difficult times such as these?
God feels most absent when our circumstances are poor when we are primarily looking for Him to provide more of a temporal solution rather than the eternally promised one. We are desperate to experience the fruit of His presence manifested in better circumstances today rather than purposefully contenting ourselves in the moment with our salvation that will span an eternity.
That isn’t to say that it is somehow wrong to hope for better circumstances but their absence is not an indicator that God is nowhere to be found, even though it might feel like it.
The reality is that Psalm 42 never actually indicates whether the Psalmists’ circumstances got better. Rather, he expresses hope, not in his circumstances or his feelings, but in His God. He gave voice to that hope in confidence that one day he would again praise God.
In this way, he did not end his song by giving in to his overwhelming feelings of despair, but by speaking truth to himself about his God. He says in verses 5 and 11 both,
“Why are you cast down, 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.”
What intimate words of relationship in reminding himself that this is his God in whom he can have confidence, hope, and trust no matter the circumstances!
Speaking Truth to Our Despair
No matter how much we struggle to hopelessly look from store to store for baby formula, toilet paper, or whatever may be next, and no matter what happens in this life, if you are God’s child, God has not abandoned you! It may be that the feeling of despair is something you are very familiar with. The reality is that God’s presence or absence is not dictated by how favorable our circumstances might be. His Spirit dwells within us, never leaving us through the storms of life until the day Christ returns to rule. In that day, He will remove the curse of disease and death and make us incorruptible to dwell in His presence forever.
His promises are larger than saving us from the fallout from a pandemic and other national and global challenges. He is actively using this time to flawlessly continue accomplishing His plan to redeem and sanctify His people for the glory of His name, through the power of the Gospel!
God doesn’t make an promise that you will feel it, especially when our circumstances are poor, but the encouragement in this Psalm is that you can confidently place your hope in Him.
While we wait and groan longingly for His return when we will see Him face to face, not one moment has gone by where God has forsaken His own.
For Further Study:
