Psalms 42:8

Psalms 42:8

I. The first thought we would draw from this verse is that there must be changes in every true life. (1) These changes give to life the most opposed conditions light and darkness. There is day and there is night. These represent the shiftings of colour that pass across our history, from the broad, bright sunshine of prosperity to the darkest and heaviest of our trials. If our life is to be of any value, these must come in some form, outwardly or inwardly. (2) These changes are according to a fixed law. It is a law of alternation. It is day and night, and, let us thank God, it is also in due time night and day. Each has its time and use. (3) In the general, God sends us a portion of the day before the night. The Christian life is usually at first a simple, humble apprehension of God's mercy which gives the love of youth, and knows not the pains of backsliding nor the chillness of decline. It is in kindness that God begins our life with such a daytime. It strengthens for the trial, and creates a memory within which can be nourished into a hope. (4) But after day it is God's manner, sooner or later, to send night. It is night that lets us measure the day. At night we can tell our work, and count our gains, and resolve, if another day be granted, that to-morrow shall not be as this day, but much more abundant. (5) And yet we cannot wish that God should close our view of this life with night. We long to have the night break up before we die, to have some horizon streak of the coming day.

II. The second thought contained in this passage is that to suit these changes in life there are Divine provisions. For the day God commands His "loving-kindness;" for the night He gives "His song." The loving-kindness is God's goodness onand aroundus, the song His goodness inand passing throughus.

III. The third thought is that there is a constant duty on our part amid all. "And my prayer unto the God of my life." The day and the night call upon us to sanctify each, by its own form, to God; and some days and nights in their temptations and sorrows demand those wrestlings that have power with God to prevail.

J. Ker, Sermons,p. 213.

References: Psalms 42:8. Homiletic Magazine,vol. viii., p. 15.Psalms 42:9. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 204.