Psalm 42:7-8 ESV
Matthew 7:7 ESV
There are a few scripture that I’ve sat with at different times through the years. It’s almost like they call out to me. This psalm is one of them.
Psalm 42:7-8 tells us, “Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”
Psalm 42 was written by the Sons of Korah. The sons of Korah are mentioned in I Chronicles 12:6 as being, “Elkanah, Isshiah, Azarel, Joezer, and Jashobeam, the Korahites.” They traveled with David and we know from 2 Chronicles 20:19 that “the Levites, of the Kohathites and the Korahites, stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice.”
In the Hebrew language Psalm 42 is a poetic psalm. At the time of David, the sons of Korah had an important role in choral and orchestral music (https://www.gotquestions.org/sons-of-Korah.html).
By day and at night God’s love and song are with us.
I was raised with what I’ll call surrender Theology. My dad was a church elder and he taught Sunday School for more than 25 years. He studied scripture daily. However, in his time he didn’t have the internet. He had a few hard copy books and he had his ol’ Bible. He relied on prayer and listening when he wrote his lessons. As he studied he surrendered the lesson to God.
Whenever I had a practical problem growing up, he wasn’t one to give me answers. Instead he would pose a question. It was almost like a riddle.
When I was young I wanted life to be easy.
I wanted a straight forward answer to my problems.
Usually when I went to my dad I wanted him to tell me what God told him. He refused to do that. He sent me back to the source. Every time he told me to turn to God and surrender my problem.
He didn’t give me easy.
He didn’t give me straight forward answers.
He would turn me around and point back to God. He was saying, go to God. Ask God. Surrender it to God and wait.
Deep goes to deep.
When I was seeking answers to the hard questions, I gradually (ever so gradually) learned to go to the source of life. My dad was telling me when I am deeply confused I need to dig into God.
God is the deep, God is the source, God is the konly ONE who has the answers.
While I wanted the answers to be out in the open and easy to access, I had to learn to stand behind the waterfall and let the answer come from the source.
I was forced to rely on God so I would know what Love really is.
I had to grapple with the character and complexity of God’s love for us…for me. Until I did that I had no idea what Love meant.
I had to learn it myself.
Each of us who really seek God has to go to God and surrender to His love. There is no easy three step plan or program that will give us easy answers.
No sermon can give it.
No piece of writing can explain it.
Deep goes to deep.
Each of us has to turn off the sound of life and go to God. We have to step behind the waterfall and wait. God is there and I’d even say God urges us to come, but we are the ones who need to ask and seek.
In Matthew 7:7, Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
When we ask and seek we will find.
Today I look back and I chuckle at my younger self. I laugh because I thought I was the one who was desperately seeking. It’s almost like I thought God was playing hide and seek..
He wasn’t.
God was in the deep urging me to come into the deep.
At night when the sound of life was turned off God would sing to me…calling me to come.
God’s steadfast love for us is a command. That’s because the love of God is the dominating force of life.
It really is all around us but we have to ask to see it. We have to seek it. We have to knock.
God opens the door.
Spiritual practice: Ask, Seek, Knock
Step into the deep with God.
In God, Deborah
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