“Put your Hope in God.” Psalm 42:11

“Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?

Put your Hope in God.
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.”  Psalm 42:11
The psalmist is having a rough time here, it seems, as he sings this song of lament, indicating that he may be suffering fear, anxiety, disappointment, or even intense sorrow.  We can certainly and readily identify with his struggles as these things often run parallel in our own lives.  Even though he might still feel the pain, it is evident that he knows within himself to “hope in God.”
We know that David “quieted” his own soul in difficult times by remembering, and reminding himself, all the times God had walked alongside him, delivering him to victory because of His faithfulness to His own, and because of His unfailing love.  I often think about a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
   Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could.  Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them
   as soon as you can. Tomorrow is another day.  You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with
   your old nonsense.
It is so important to tell ourselves the truth about everything.  Only then will we be able to start each day with songs of joy instead of songs of lament.
I think it was Emerson who also said at another time, “I get up every morning and tell myself all the good news I can think of.”  Not a bad way to begin each day!  Here the psalmist, too, rises above his circumstances because he says the right things to himself and because he realizes his hope is in
God, and God alone.   At the end of the verse, the psalmist is now singing his song; the light is shining through, and he blissfully says,                           “I shall yet praise Him.”
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