A couple of weeks ago, I had volunteered to lead Monday morning devotional at work. Each Monday morning we gather as an office to share our praises, offer our prayers and dive into scripture together as a work family. I have volunteered to lead many Monday mornings in my year and a half working here, but this Monday turned out to be different.
Our little office is just hours away from the massacre in Sutherland Springs. Coming together this Monday morning, I didn’t feel equipped to lead.
I woke up early and went to the local coffeehouse to read through scripture, devotionals and anything I could find online. Nothing was speaking to the incident; what can? What words are there for such tragedy? Even the word tragedy doesn’t seem an appropriate description. Still I searched. Being Monday morning after the Sunday shooting, there really wasn’t an online response yet. Yes – there was news article after news article, but with my heart heavy, the last thing I wanted to read was news. I needed to hear a human heart beat. I needed to hear the soul speak. No one had done this yet on Monday morning; people had not yet gathered their thoughts. There were still only feelings floating at the surface – pain, sorrow, confusion, anger, fear, and aching, hurting feelings that don’t even have a name. For me, it is never good to stay with feelings too long. Instead, I find the best words come in the space between those feelings and truth, so I opened my Bible and I felt all those nameless emotions that had a heartbeat. I then read Psalm 42.
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears l have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
5 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
6 My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermona—from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
8 By day the Lord directs his loved
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
11 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
I knew this would be enough for devotional. I knew this was where I was in this moment, where many of us where. I knew that I was both the questioner and responder in “Where is your God?” Only my faith held the answer to that question, and my heart and mind were the ones asking. My soul was indeed downcast, but I read and understood this Psalm as instruction to allow my faith to encourage my faith. I so palpably felt the word “yet.” Yet we praise him.
On Monday morning, I asked if I could just pray this Psalm aloud for us because we are the panting deer searching for streams of water, while the hunter, this wild, mad world so viciously pursues. I asked my fellow coworkers to share the answer to that question: “Where is your God?” They all had wonderful, beautiful answers. On a day filled with sorrow, we leaned into the yet.
Now, another Monday has passed, and I am still struggling to understand and honestly struggling to “yet praise him.” My soul is still downcast and disturbed. My brain seeks to know the answer to that question, “Where is your God?”
Right now I find some comfort in that Jesus weeps alongside us (John 11:35). Lazarus was dead, and even knowing he would be raised, Jesus cried. This leads me to believe that while God may work everything to His will, he is not a God who does not hurt alongside us. This is where I begin today. This is my “yet.” The crying eyes of Jesus gift me comfort that we are most certainly not alone in our sorrow. Even Jesus, who had full understanding, wept. So, I hope you do not read or understand the “yet praise him” to be void of emotion, or perhaps worse, filled with strictly joy and gladness. There is room for sadness in the praise.