Before I Depart to Be No More

I have come to see with frightening clarity how brief this life is.

My life is no more than a breath.

Yet when I speak these words Psalm 42 rises up in me.

As the deer longs for running streams so my soul longs for you my God.

My days pass like mist yet something in me thirsts with a hunger that will not die.

My soul thirsts for God

the God of my life.

Even in this brevity something eternal stirs.

God’s hand has been heavy upon me.

It breaks open the hardness of my heart.

It exposes the pride and illusions I have carried for years.

Yet when my strength fails me the psalm answers.

These things will I remember

as I pour out my soul.

Hope begins its quiet work in memory

in recalling the moments when grace touched me

even in darkness.

The psalmist says

I am silent because it is You who have done this.

And Psalm 42 answers this silence with its own cry.

Why are you cast down my soul

why groan within me

hope in God

I will praise him still.

My meditation groans from the weight of years

yet the psalm refuses to let despair have the final word.

I look back and see that everything I once trusted has slipped through my hands.

Even the good things pass into nothingness.

But Psalm 42 lifts my eyes to something that remains.

Deep is calling on deep

in the roar of mighty waters.

Your torrents and all your waves swept over me.

Not for destruction

but for cleansing.

God is not absent in the flood

He is the One who commands it

the One who carries me through it.

So I pray

Let what must be devoured be devoured.

Only do not remove Your hand from me.

Do not leave me alone in the emptiness of my own heart.

And the psalm replies

By day the Lord will send his loving kindness

by night I will sing to him

praise the God of my life.

The cry for mercy becomes a song

even in the night.

Because beneath the weight of my failing strength

there is still one fragile cry.

I want to feel Your hand resting upon me.

I want to rest in Your hope.

And Psalm 42 turns this longing toward Christ Himself.

I will go to the altar of God

the God of my joy.

Even the aged soul

the weary soul

the soul near the gate of death

longs to go to that altar

because the One who waits there does not pass away.

Psalm 39 says

Hear my prayer

before I depart to be no more.

Psalm 42 answers

Hope in God

I will praise him still.

The prayer of a man facing the end

meets the hope of a man who refuses to despair

because God is not the God of endings

but the God of life.

So I offer this final cry

Do not be deaf to my tears.

Do not let me leave this world without Your mercy.

Let Your compassion reach me before I slip from this life.

Psalm 42 takes this cry and lights a small fire within it.

My Savior and my God.

Not the judge of my despair

but the One who comes for me

even as my days fade.

Let me leave this world with Your name on my lips

and Your hand upon my soul

and let me rest at last in the hope

that the psalm refuses to surrender

the hope that never dies

the hope that is Christ.