Psalms 42:2 · World English Bible
Psalms 42:2 Meaning My Soul Thirsts for God
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
What does Psalms 42:2 mean?
Shawq: Longing Shawq is the ache of wanting God himself. It comes before any answer does, and nothing else touches it: not food, not company, not good news.
From the Sufism reading below.
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The same verse, read by one tradition.
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Shawq: Longing Shawq is the ache of wanting God himself. It comes before any answer does, and nothing else touches it: not food, not company, not good news. Carrying it takes up most of a person's day, because only the one who is missing can settle it.
The reed cries because it was cut from the reed bed: the ache comes from having been close Rumi opens his long poem with that cry. A person who has felt God near and then lost the feel of it aches in a way others do not. The ache holds the memory of that nearness and keeps them turned toward it.
If I worship You for heaven, shut me out of heaven: the wanting is for God himself Rabia prayed that way. Longing slides easily into longing for relief, for calm, for the good feeling that used to come. She asked for the giver rather than the gifts, and a wanting like that stays awake until God himself comes.
Al-Ḥayy: The Living Al-Ḥayy is one of God's names, the Living. Everything else is alive on loan and can be taken back, which anyone who has watched someone die already knows. Longing of this kind goes past everything that can end and stops at the one who cannot.
When He lets you ask, He means to give: the longing started on His side Ibn Ata Allah said this plainly. Someone deep in wanting usually reads the wanting as proof of distance, evidence that God has gone quiet and moved off. Taken his way, the pull began with God, and the ache becomes a sign of being drawn rather than dropped.
Liqā': Meeting God Liqā' is the meeting with God that the Quran promises. Waiting is hardest when no date comes with it, and the question of when rises straight out of the longing. Keeping the promise in view without the date, a person waits for something that will come.
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Live Psalms 42:2 today
- Sometime today, when the wanting rises, ask whether you want relief or you want God. Sit with the answer even if it embarrasses you.
- Tell one person, plainly, that you miss God lately. That sentence is harder to say than it looks, and it usually lands better than you expect.
- When the day runs long with no good news in it, keep going without numbing out on the screen. Waiting without a date on it is still waiting for something that will come.
Am I waiting for my circumstances to change, or for God himself?
The same truth in other traditions
Bhagavad Gita 2
Krishna says the one who is real was never born and does not end, while everything else comes and goes. Wanting that is wanting the only thing that does not pass.
Upanishads
The teaching prays to be led from what dies to what does not, from the dark to the light. The longing is for the living one, not for comfort along the way.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
Marcus told himself to want what actually lasts rather than the applause and the ease that evaporate. A desire pointed at anything smaller keeps needing to be fed again.
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