Disturbed Within

I was reading in Psalms today and came across a passage I must have highlighted a couple of years ago. The passage is in Psalm 43.

Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell.
Then will I go to the alter of God,
to God, my joy and my delight.
I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
Why are you so 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.

If I am not mistaken in my (anything but exhaustive) study of the Psalms, the lament felt by the Psalmist was that of not being able to be at the temple to worship God. He felt that he needed to be at the temple of God in order to be in God's presence. It struck me in a different way, outside of the specific circumstances of the Psalmist. The passage that hit me was v. 5 "Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will praise him yet."
How can I be so easily discouraged with life? I have the eternal promise of heaven; the knowledge that I will see God face to face one day and see how God wove every day of my life together for his purpose. And yet sometimes all it takes to knock me off that heavenly pedestal is some mentally deficient driver who doesn't seem to notice the 700 other cars in the immediate area and decides to perform a death streak across all lanes of traffic for no apparent reason (no signal, of course). It's happened, more than once, and I can tell you living out Christ-like example is not my first inclination at that point. To go just a bit deeper than road rage, I find it is sometimes an easy and comfortable retreat into discouragement. Flipping through Psalms I can tell what kind of season I was going through by what is highlighted. "Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep?", "...do not turn a deaf ear to me...", "How long will you hide your face from me?" I wish I could say that I have since quit marking these passages, but alas I have not yet arrived. Once in a while I devote an entire prayer time to nothing but giving thanks for the blessings I have been given. After those prayer times it is impossible to see how my soul could be downcast. The Lord has given me so much to be thankful for. Nonetheless, there is no question that the trials, pain, despair and hurt that come into my life have a purpose. I have grown tremendously through the difficult times in my life. But perhaps the most powerful result of feeling that despair in my soul is the passion in which I seek the Lord. At no other time in my spiritual walk am I as desperate for the Lord's comfort and grace as when my soul is in despair. I may never fully understand why, in the midst of all of my blessings and the eternal promise I have been given, it is so easy for my soul to become downcast.

The last part of that verse, "Put you hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.", reminds me of a slow clap in some romantic comedy that starts with one person and then spreads to the entire crowd that has gathered or the steadily rising anthem as or hero delivers a speech that would bring the most manliest of men to tears. The Psalmist pulls himself up by the bootstraps and says no matter where I am God or what my circumstance I know you are with me and I will seek you and I will praise you again and my soul will rejoice once more. Amen!