After yesterday’s meditation, surely this psalm is appropriate for today. Is our hope in God?, 39. 7. If so, what are the inner stirrings of our hearts just now? Can we say now with fervour, “Hope in God”? The psalmist seems to be conscious of three important facts:
- A Remorseful Remembrance. Three times he cries, “Why art thou cast down?”. “I remember”, v. 4, is (a) the cry of Conscience, v. 4. He remembers past days when he went with the throng, and led them to the house of God, R.V. Those were days of singing and holydays, but now his soul is disquieted within him, v. 5. (ft) It is also the cry of Conviction, v. 10. His adversaries reproached him and said, “Where is thy God?”. This was as a sword in his bones. Are we moved also—in our quiet place are we forced to think of our yesterdays? The thoughts of the psalmist are still carrying him back to such backsliding, and he remembers his God from the deathly wilderness experience (the land of Jordan); days when he was too self-exalted for God (the Hermons); yet days when he was reduced to conscious humiliation (the littleness of Mizar). Out of such soul-distress, however, we hear
- A Regretful Repentance. The hand of the Lord had been heavy upon him, v. 7, and now we hear, “why go I mourning?”, v. 9; see v. 3. His thoughts return to the goodness of God, “Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me”, v. 8. He is “the God of my life”. Hence he says, “hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance”, v. 5. This conviction is beginning to grip him more and more, and he repeats it, v. 11. His soul steadily moves towards
- A Restful Restoration, vv. 1, 2. The inner longings for God are reviving, “when shall I come and appear before God?”, v. 2. His soul-vision is returning, and he beholds before him the rare prospect that is still inviting. His thirst for spiritual things rises, “My soul thirsteth for God”; the productivity of the land of Jordan is not to be compared with such fertile fields, since God is there. May our prayer today be, “Lord, turn me from my careless past, to view what Thy love has prepared for me”.
