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.
Psalm 42:11
The writer of this psalm is conflicted. In his soul he is ‘cast down,’ despairing, sorrowful. And yet his mind is active, working to persuade his soul back into hope.
For those who are depressed, disappointed, or lonely, the call to hope in anything is often rejected. Hope that is then disappointed is an even greater blow and sends the person into renewed and deeper sorrow.
That is why it is interesting to see the reason the writer of this verse gives for hoping in God. He says “Hope in God.” Why? “For I shall again praise him.” He doesn’t say that God will get him out of his current bad situation. He doesn’t say that God will make him feel better or make his life better. He says that he will praise God again, and that is the reason to hope.
Am I the only one who finds that strange?
Praise is connected with worship. You talk a lot and excitedly about the things you worship. You tell yourself and other people about how great, amazing, wonderful they are. And as I think about praise, thinking back in my life, the times I was very happy, were the times I was in the middle of praising something.
In fact, perhaps the very reason our souls get downcast in the first place, is that we hope in and praise the wrong things. And those things turn out to be empty and disappointing. We hope in our new job, only to discover it isn’t all that we thought. We hope in the comforts of this world like food, games, friends and family. But those things are temporary, and don’t last.
We hope in a new budding romance. We spend years building the relationship and feel emotions we have never felt. We think this is it. We have found love. But then the years pass and the romance fades. And the marriage ends. What was it all for?
And our souls are tumultuous things. They writhe in grief, anger, hopelessness. We put our hope in what we praised, what we worshiped, and those things were not God. So they did not meet our hopes.
Maybe we have trouble hoping in God because we have not praised Him enough. We have not sat in a chair, or on a bench in the park, thinking about Him. We have not spent time with other Christians who really love God and talked with them about Him and how amazing and wonderful He really is. Instead, we talk with each other about sports, or politics, or even the weather (“How nice it is today!”). We praise so many things. Is our hope in those things?
Let us resolve to place our hope in God. He is the only one who is worthy of praise. When we praise God with our words, it is because we have truly seen part of who He is. And when we see God for who He is, our hope is validated, strengthened and can never disappoint us.