June 24,  2007am  Looking Up from within the Well     Psalms 42

By Ronald E.  George Jr. at the Fayetteville Baptist Church

  U.S. border police rescue thirsty migrant from well from June 21, 2007

PHOENIX (Reuters) - U.S. border police rescued a woman who clambered down a well after running short of water on a trek across the blistering Sonora Desert from Mexico and became trapped, authorities said on Wednesday.

After rescuing her on Tuesday, the U.S. Border Patrol arrested the Mexican woman and four other people traveling with her for illegally crossing into the United States .

The woman had slid down a pipe into the 30-foot (10-metre) deep well on an American Indian reservation southwest of Tucson to fetch water for two children aged 6 and 9, the Border Patrol said.

"Once she got down there she found that she didn't have the strength to pull herself out," Ron Bellavia, a commander with the Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue team in Tucson , told Reuters by telephone.

Bellavia said the woman clung to a narrow ledge in the well for three hours until she was rescued. Rescuers treated her for dehydration and bee stings.

Last year some 1.1 million undocumented immigrants were arrested crossing the deserts and rivers of from Mexico , more than a third of them through southern Arizona .

Each year several hundred people die attempting the journey across the deserts and rivers of the border, most from heat related causes.

Epigram On God (Provisions of)

•     When you have nothing left but God, then for the first time you become aware that God is enough. —Maude Royden

•     God never commands anyone to do something without telling him about the provisions.

•     Will the guardian of a well die of thirst? —Malay Proverb^[1]

“Psalms, then, speaks directly to our inner lives. The patterns of relationship we find there guide you and me in our prayer lives.

Like the poetry of other peoples, Hebrew poetry is not designed so much to communicate information as to share the inner life and feelings of its writers.

This characteristic of the Psalms is very important to us, and is a dynamic aspect of divine revelation. Through the Psalms we are able to see the men and women of Scripture as real people, gripped by the feelings that move us. We are also able to sense a relationship with God that is deeply personal and real. Every dimension of the human personality is touched when faith establishes that personal relationship. God meets us as whole persons—He touches our feelings, our emotions, our joys and sorrows, our despair and depression. Faith in God is not just an intellectual kind of thing; it is a relationship which engages everything that we are. Thus, in the Psalms we have a picture of the relationship to which God is calling us today—a relationship in which we have freedom to be ourselves, and to share ourselves freely with the Lord and with other believers.”^[2]

Hebrew poetry. Unlike English poetry, which emphasizes rhyme and meter, Hebrew poetry relies on other characteristics for its impact. These are parallelism, rhythm, and figures of speech.

Parallelism. English verse manipulates sound, and emphasizes rhyme and meter. Hebrew poetry repeats and rearranges thoughts rather than sounds. There are several types of parallel arrangement of thoughts, with three being basic.

* Synonymous parallelism indicates verses in which the same thought is repeated in different words.   “But God in heaven merely laughs! He is amused by all their puny plans.”  Psalm 2:4 (tlb)

* Antithetical parallelism indicates verses in which a thought is emphasized by a following contrasting thought.    “The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.”   Psalm 34:10

* Synthetic parallelism indicates a pattern of adding thoughts to explain or develop an original expression.    Psalm 1:3    He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and whose leaf does not wither.   ^[3]

Scripture Text:  Psalm 42:1 (NIV) As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" 4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. 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 6 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 . 7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. 8 By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me-- a prayer to the God of my life. 9 I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?" 10 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?" 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.

Ps 42:1–11. Maschil—(See on Ps 32:1, title). For (see Introduction) the sons of Korah. The writer, perhaps one of this Levitical family of singers accompanying David in exile, mourns his absence from the sanctuary, a cause of grief aggravated by the taunts of enemies, and is comforted in hopes of relief. This course of thought is repeated with some variety of detail, but closing with the same refrain.^[4]

1.  The missing part is God.  As the deer pants for streams of water so my soul pants for you, O God.  Our thirst is for the living God.  There are lots of substitutes.  There are many dead gods who provide no relief or comfort to the soul. 

2.  When can I go and meet with God?  You can meet with God now and know God now.  Is God missing when we are having problems?  Do you remember when? 

From the depths of the ocean to the depths of my soul I feel the need for something to fill the void that is within.   This is the void that longs for something.  What is there to fill my life with meaning, significance, and purpose?  Then there is the Lord, the Creator who can give me what I need.  

3.  Is God missing in my life?  When I have trouble, when I still have needs and there  are unanswered questions in my life.  I have seen the enemy and they is us.  Often our own doubts cause us to feel deserted by our God.  Jesus spoke from the cross these same thoughts.  Why have you forsaken me?  But…

4.  He is still there?   I remember when I worshiped Him and praised him.   Regardless of my circumstances I will still put my hope in the living God.   He is the only true living God who is my strength and my joy.  Where else can I turn?  He has not forsaken me but I have doubted Him. 

5.  I must continue to call Him my God

I must persist to call on his name.

I must continue to believe and have faith that he is there.

I must daily call on his name and worship him.

I must depend on him to fill my life with purpose and meaning. 

I must praise him. 

I must remember the times in the past when I have. 

I must know Him and the power of his presence in my life.

I must know Him to answer the why in  my life. 

I must know Him to find fulfillment in my life.

I must know Him to have hope. 

The ocean may be deep but those who trust in the Lord will be carried by his arms. 

Have you trusted in Him? 

Deepest Areas In Oceans

Some of the deepest areas in the world are found in the oceans. These especially deep areas are called trenches. The deepest discovered trench in the Pacific Ocean is the Mariana Trench which is 36,198 feet or almost 7 miles deep! While in the Atlantic Ocean the deepest discovered trench is the Puerto Rico Trench which is 28,734 feet deep.^[5]