Deep Calls to Deep

This morning I continued reading Psalm 42, this time focusing on verse 3:

"My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?'"

The theme of Psalm 42 is primarily about hope. Just look at the number of times the word "hope" is used in such a short psalm...

Verse 5 - "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon — from Mount Mizar."

Verse 11 - "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

But Romans 8:24-25 tells us that "hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." In other words, hope only operates when the answer has not yet come! And that's where faith kicks in. For Hebrews 11:1 (NLT) tells us:

"What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see."

This is why there is also another phrase that is repeated within Psalm 42:

Verse 3 - "My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?.'"

Verse 10 - "My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

When we go through suffering, it is sometimes easy to lose focus and become introspective. At that time, God can feel far away. Hope seems to reduce to a pinprick.

Although yesterday was one of the hardest days for me so far (feeling discouraged at times...echoes of Psalm 42 I guess), I quickly rallied and so Psalm 42 has meant a lot to me again this morning. Faith is not faith unless it is being tested (see 1 Peter 1:6-7), and so I shouldn't be surprised when my faith in the Lord is tested during this time.

The answer, in Psalm 42, comes in verse 8:

"By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me - a prayer to the God of my life."

I am truly experiencing this "day and night" expression of God's presence - at day, experiencing his love in so many facets, and at night, his song of thanksgiving and deliverance (see Psalm 32:7).

Psalm 42:7 is the core of the psalm, and has been a significant verse in my life now for over 20 years. It says:

"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me."

Deep calls to deep. The picture is of the thundering roar of a waterfall, where the water above crashes down into the water below (if you've been to Niagra Falls, or a similar large waterfall, you'll know what I mean). But why is this a picture of my experience now?

I believe that this "deep to deep" experience is what underlies the maturing process that occurs during painful trials of faith. At times of suffering, it is natural to ask, "Why are you allowing this to happen to me, God?" But what I've come to realise is that suffering is actually a part of the growth process. Ah, some might say, suffering can be the result of our own wrong choices or due the judgment of God, and this is true. But not all suffering can be easily dismissed like this. This is why Paul says in Romans 5:3: "Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance..."

One time many years ago, when I was asking the typical "why" question to God, the Lord spoke to me out of Psalm 42:7. And this is what I want to share with you now, because this simple revelation is the undergirding for me during this painful trial of faith.

The Lord explained to me that there is a depth that is produced by suffering. Have you ever met a "shallow" person - someone with no "depth"? When you are going through a hard time, the last thing you want is a shallow person to put his arm around you and try to cheer you up, because you know there is no depth to his experience. His words are just words. But it is a different matter when someone who has actually suffered pain and loss (even if it is not the same kind of pain and loss that you are now experiencing) comforts you and speaks words of hope. Because behind those words there is the depth of experience. Their comfort becomes a "deep calls to deep" experience.

There is also a deep fellowship that emerges from common suffering. Any person who has been through deep suffering has a special bond with those who have been through similar suffering. Think of those who went through the Holocaust, or who have endured a war. Such deep suffering produces deep fellowship.

But then I realised something I had never understood before. God is a God of depth! He has suffered far more than you can possibly imagine. From the moment of the fall of man, He has witnessed people rejecting him, and if this was not enough, he has seen the results of that rejection in people's lives - pain, agony, sickness, broken relationships, wars, death. On top of this, he has taken on himself all of our suffering. Isaiah 53:3-5 tells us:

"[Jesus] was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."

Jesus voluntarily entered into intense suffering on my behalf (the word "excruciating" comes from the Latin word meaning "out of the cross"). Thus the suffering that I'm going through right now cannot be compared with the sheer depth of the suffering that God himself has experienced.

And as God enters into relationship with me, "Deep calls to deep." In other words, the depths of God's heart call out to the depths of my heart, and vice versa. Deep cannot call to shallow. And so is it then surprising that God allows suffering to mature me, to deepen me? And is it then surprising that out of these times of suffering, I discover God in ways that I never would have before?

Now I am not saying that we should have a martyr complex. Jesus was no martyr. The cross was not the end, but merely the doorway to the resurrection. In the same way, I know God will deliver me. There is a victory at the end of this trial. But even knowing this, I do not want to short-circuit the process of God's work in my life. Although, like the psalmist, I often cry out, "O my God, do not delay" (see Psalm 40:17), I also know that these times are precious too (not the suffering itself, but the relationship I experience with the Lord in the midst of the suffering). At the end of my trial, I will say: "I never want to go through that again!" But at the same time, I will also say, "Don't even think of taking that trial away from me, because I am now who I am because of what I have been through with God (see 1 Corinthians 15:10).

This is why, I believe, 1 Peter 1:6-7 says:

"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

There is a "gold" being refined by my faith during this trial - a gold of the soul that I will carry with me into eternity, a depth that will define my life forever. For not only do I have the depth of maturity built into my own character, I also experience the depths in God that I could never have experienced otherwise. And so for that reason, I say:

"Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."