If a hymn can be ubiquitous, “As the Deer” came about as close as any in our local congregation. For a while, we sang it every week. You alone are my heart’s desire, and I long to worship Thee. The very interesting thing about this song is that the opening phrase of the hymn, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God,” is not really the thrust of the psalm. The psalmist writes, twice, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?” Then in psalm 43, this refrain is repeated.
But he doesn’t stop there. He doesn’t just pose the question and leave it hanging. He goes on, all three times, to state, “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”
As the psalm develops, he tells of his tears being his food day and night. He says that he’s downcast. He asks if God has forgotten him. He suffers ridicule from his foes. Regardless of his persecution, suffering, trials and tribulation, he keeps coming back to the question, “Why are you downcast, O my soul?”
I wonder if it’s a kind of amazement as he’s looking at himself. I can imagine looking at myself and thinking, “What in the world do you have to be depressed about? Isn’t God your God? Don’t you trust Him? Haven’t you tasted and seen that God is good all the time? Have you so quickly forgotten what God has done for you?” It’s almost as if the psalmist is giving us, today, a recipe for getting a better perspective on what’s really happening in our day to day life. Yes, it might look depressing. Yes, there are people making fun of you. Yes, things are hard. But don’t you know God? Better yet, aren’t you known of God? And if you know God, that means you have a relationship. That means you’ve experienced just how important your relationship with God truly is. So maybe, just maybe, the opening lines of Psalm 42 give us the only remedy that will truly cure our stress and depression: as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O my God!
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