Psalm 84 and Me

Howdy! My name is Abigail Parnell. To start I thought I would tell you a little bit of my history with the Psalms.

My History with the Psalms

 I am a daughter of a pastor in the Reformed Presbyterian Church which means I have grown up singing the Psalms. This has been a great blessing but it has definitely had its challenges. It has made me very comfortable with the Psalms; I am very familiar with them, and I have learned many Psalms by heart because of my upbringing. In fact, I never really thought about how different and strange this was to other people. I definitely was too comfortable. I was singing Psalms because that was what my Church did. I had never really thought about it personally; I didn’t appreciate them or hear God’s voice in them.

I was rudely awakened when I attended an amazing/awesome theological program for youth. While I was there I met many Christians with many different levels of understanding and maturity. Many young believers who were there hadn't sung the Psalms all their lives and weren’t comfortable with them. They were questioning the basis for something that I had accepted all my life as normal. This came as a bit of a shock to me. I almost felt like I had missed something.

Now I am not saying I regret growing up with the Psalms! However, I definitely needed to understand why I sang the Psalms. It needed to become my own conviction to sing the Psalms. While I know that I can't simply accept something because it's comfortable, I also am reminded of the verse in second Timothy:

2 Timothy 3:14-15

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you have learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.”

My life is summed up in Psalm 84

In a similar way, I have been going to church for all my life. I can become comfortable so easily. church was another one of those things I just did. It was more of a social gathering for my own pleasure. I was blind to the rich blessing set before me EVERY week. But God was good. He showed me my ignorance. He didn’t take away the gift, but He showed me its beauty. He took me out of my comfort zone.

As I said, church was a social thing. In fact, church was my social group. I didn’t really know anybody outside of my Church community. So God gave me something to compare his gift to. He placed me in a three year program at a Vo-tech school where I was surrounded by people who acted and spoke in way that showed that they didn’t care about God. 

Enter Psalm 84….

Verse 1-2: How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

  

Being surrounded by that selfish attitude I came to recognize my own selfishness. At the same time God caused to grow in me a longing for Him, His house, and His people. Being in the world drove me to my God.

Verses 3-5: Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Selah Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

The world without God is a dry and dessert place. In contrast God offers a sweet dwelling place in Him! God strengthened me even in that place of spiritual barrenness where He had placed me. This was because HE was with me. God was my shield, my Sun. He is becoming more and more my joy.

Verses 6-9: As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed!

It is nothing short of a miracle when you stop and think about it. God changed my heart, using the world! He changed my heart and made it my soul’s delight to be in His presence!

Verses 10-11: For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.  For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.

And now the last verse perfectly states the song of my soul!

Verse 12:  O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!

Finding Christ When We Feel Alone

"As deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God." (Psalm 42:1)

Our pastor is really good at telling stories. And while preaching on this Psalm, he did a very good job of illustrating with words the desperation of a thirsty deer after it has been running for miles through the fields and woods. While going over this Psalm later on my own, I read this verse and I could not help but think of the many times I run to the water fountain in seeming desperation during dance practice. After a fast-paced five minute long dance (five minutes of dancing is longer than it looks), my chest feels about ready to die. My heart is beating hard and fast. And I plunge my head into that water fountain the way that thirsty deer, white with foam, sheen with sweat, and near parched to death, would probably plunge its own head into the flowing streams of life-giving water.

This is the thirst that the Psalmist has for God when he sings Psalm 42. You can almost imagine him walking along the shores of Jordan when all of a sudden he sees that thirsty deer approaching the river's shores. It plunges its head into the rushing waters and the Psalmist is inspired. His soul leaps, because he knows he is as thirsty for God's presence as that deer is for the water. And he bursts into song.

"My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my food day and night.

while they say to me all the day long,

'Where is your God?'" (2-3)

My pastor is not just good at telling stories, but he's also good at finding Jesus Christ in the Psalms where I never would expect Him to be. Here in verses two and three, we not only have a defected, lonely, suffering Psalmist yearning for God's presence, but we also have Jesus Christ, hanging on the cross. He cries "I thirst" in the first verse of this Psalm. He thirsts not for wine or water, but for the living God, for the presence and nearness of His Father (Jn. 19:27-30). He cries out to His Father, but there is no answer. He is left to suffer all the judgment and wrath accumulated by us on his own. He is alone. His tears are His food all day and night. And below the crowds cry and jeer at Him, "Where is your God?"  (Mtt. 27:39-43, Mk. 15:29-32, Lk. 23:35-39).


Have we not felt this in our own lives? Even as Christians, as people who know and believe that God is forever present and with us, do we not still so often feel alone? As though God has abandoned us? When you feel alone and abandoned, remember, as much as you experience and struggle with these feelings, you never are truly alone. And I know this is true because Christ suffered loneliness on the cross for you. He was completely abandoned by His Father in Heaven in His suffering. He is the only man who ever legitimately cried, "When shall I come and appear before God?" and "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Ps. 22:1, Matt. 27:46) because God was truly not there.


When you feel alone, remember that Christ knows what it feels like to be left alone. And Christ is the only one who ever need be truly left forgotten and alone. 

"These things I remember,

as I pour out my soul:

how I would go with the throng

and lead them in procession to the house of God

with glad shouts and songs of praise,

a multitude keeping festival." (4)

While on the cross, our Savior remembers. He remembers how He led the people of Jerusalem in worship when He entered the Holy City, how He rode on the back of a humble donkey and led the people in procession to the house of God. And they cried, "Hosanna! Save us!" (Mtt. 21:1-11, Mk. 11:1-11, Jn. 12:12-19). He remembers how God fulfilled His promise that day. And He finds comfort in remembering the worship place of God as He suffers on the cross. 

"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." (5-6a).

This Psalm is one of the few Psalms that is in the foremost thoughts of my memory. I find myself singing it and repeating its words to myself quite often in times of confusion and doubt, especially this one phrase when the Psalmist reminds Himself, "Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God." These are my Savior's words, they're not just mine, or King David's, or the Sons of Korah, or whoever "really" wrote this Psalm. Jesus is the one singing these words to me. He carried them all the way to the cross. And now I sing these words with my Savior.