We’ve all seen ads that say or imply things like, “This can change your life,” or “Use this, and in just three months, you’ll be a new person.” And us? We keep hoping for fulfillment, often in things. At our house, our eyes—at least, my husband’s- -regularly roam over the car section in the paper, imagining which components make up the very best deal on four wheels. There’s that thirst for the thrill of new-car ownership. Now, we also keep our eye on the real estate booklets that come. Perhaps there’s a better house, or a piece of land with more quiet, more woods, perhaps a stream or pond, something that would just be more – what shall we say, satisfying.

We each find the lure of filling up our lives with good things, of driving off into the sunset in that sleek and powerful car or SUV, or buying just the right couch or lawnmower or having ___ -- you fill in the blank. We know that’s our culture’s hold on us, luring us to buy with the promises of happiness and satisfaction that, alas!, ultimately does not last. Were we to own everything we could, we would still have that knawing at our souls, that thirst.

Many of you have read C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia Tales and many other books in his explanation of the Christian faith. He once said that God has created within us what he calls an “inconsolable longing” which is for God alone. Pascal described this longing as a God-shaped vacuum within us. Third century Augustine began his famous autobiography, The Confessions, with a description of his young life of sowing his wild oats, all the time seeking to fill an emptiness within, a desire that he found could not be filled by things or people, only God.

In a book entitled, My Soul Thirsts: An Invitation to Intimacy with God, Steven Korsh, a minister, describes a conversation he had with a young father. It captures the spiritual experience of so many believers. This man had grown up in the church, married a lovely woman, and was now a faithful husband and father, a successful salesman, and a church leader. Even with this background, the man confessed, “. . . I have done everything right to the best of my ability. I have lived a safe and secure life. But as I sit here today, it seems so bland and incredibly boring. I have never known the excitement of real intimacy with God or the uncertain adventure of living by faith. I feel like I have missed the very heart of what it’s all about.” (S. Korsh, My SoulThirsts: An Invitation to Intimacy with God [Valley Forge: Judson Press] 2.)

There is a craving inside each of us that longs for something more than any person or possession in this world can offer. It comes from the deepest caverns of the heart. It drives us, frustrates us, and refuses to be ignored. It cannot be satisfied by merely doing what is good or right. It is the core need in everyone’s life.” Korsch concludes, “It is the need to be in an ever closer relationship with God – spiritual intimacy” (p. 2), an intimacy like that expressed in the opening lines of Psalm 42:

We turn to God in Christ and are baptised, and that leads to a life full of God’s blessing, doesn’t it? Many people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but theologian Eugene Peterson reports that there is an alarming rate of people falling away, throwing in the towel and staying home or going golfing on Sunday mornings. One writer describes a common frustration by noting, “No sooner have we have plunged expectantly and enthusiastically, into the river of Christian faith than we get our noses full of water and come up coughing and choking.”

We become discouraged in our faith. We thought we were supposed to be happier, more alive with hope in Christ. But when difficulties come and our prayers are not answered as we hoped, or when we can’t make sense of reading the Bible, we tend to give up our efforts. Then we despair, longing to recover that joy and promise of new life.

It can be tempting to give up, especially when few of our friends and nobody in our family supports our efforts to read the bible or that devotional or encourages our regular worship. Today’s psalmist writes from a place of exile, in Egypt. There he had no temple to go to, nor friends of faith. That’s also where this psalmist was emotionally – in exile:

He admits his despair:

There’s real honesty here—and real lament. And there’s been little space in our churches to allow ourselves to lament the brokenness of life. Yet it is here, in Psalm 42. We have come to think that happiness is all we are after and that’s what a Christian is supposed to always show. But if we are true to the biblical record, we will find that lament is part of the life of most people throughout the world. God’s mysterious presence is revealed to us through sorrow, as well as joy. The psalms are above all, honest. They acknowledge that suffering is a part of life—even as it was for Jesus, who did not reign victoriously on earth, but died on a cross. And this lament psalm acknowledges that following God’s call is often difficult.

We know that psalms are really prayers. And just as in many prayers, this psalmist has two important things going in his favor: belief and remembrance. First, he believes in God. Right from the outset, he is addressing God. He’s asking, “Where are you, God?” “Prayer,” Eugene Peterson says, “is the language of people who are in trouble and know it, and who believe or hope God can get them out” (Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989] 36). Even as those around him taunt him, he has this foundational BELIEF that God listens! A Jewish Christian professor and friend demonstrated how he often shook his fist at God. That’s full of faith, he would say to his students, because while yelling at God in one’s distress, whatever the sorrow or anguish, the very act of addressing God recognizes that there is a God to talk to! So, in this sense, even shaking one’s fist at God is an act of faith, of belief!

Secondly, and very importantly for you and me, the psalmist REMEMBERS. He recalls the times he went to worship with joy and thanksgiving, especially at holidays and festivals. He may be far away from any place to worship now, but his memories keep alive his hope. “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God,” he confesses. And I sense a great sigh of relief as he gets to that point. We, too, can say, “I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” Because we, too, remember that God has called us into the covenant. Remember that Jesus Christ has opened the gates for us to be adopted as children of God, remember your baptism, and that God’s blessing can always brings good and new life out of any circumstance, no matter how bad.

Difficulties and times of near despair come upon all of us, and the noise of many voices clamor for our attention and would make us forget God. That “inconsolable longing” can catch us by surprise, when we seem far from God. Yet this thirst for God draws us on.

In our thirst, and in our lament, we can remember God. For God’s love is shown through our very lives. It is enfleshed in Jesus Christ and now in one another, who are Christ’s arms who embrace us and hands who touch us. God fills us with the breath of the Spirit and with Christ’s light of hope and love. We can trust God and remember that we are a people of hope, who say,

Amen.