Deep Calls to Deep

Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
Psalm 42:7-8

I love the mystery of the phrase

"deep calls to deep".

David wrote this Psalm when he was full of sorrow and despair - he had been exiled from his country by the rebellion of his son. "His griefs came wave upon wave. There was no intermission to his woe. At the same time his heart sank within him. The deep outside called to the deep within. Conscience, as with a lightning flash, lit up the abyss of the sufferer’s inward depravity and made him see the darkness of the sin into which he had fallen with the wife of Uriah in days gone by and filled him with despondency and sad forebodings. While outside everything was comfortless, within him there was nothing to cheer him." (Charles Spurgeon, http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols13-15/chs865.pdf

David compared his situation to storms around him. The deep waves of the sea call out to the deep storehouses of water above the earth. Internal waves of sorrow crashed over David and torrents of difficult circumstances crashed down from above. Internal and external sorrows combined.

But David does not lose faith. It is for this reason that David was called a man after God's own heart. When filled with sorrow, when confronted with his sin, when running for his life - in every circumstance - David had faith and hope in God; David loved God; and David was obedient to God. David was willing to humble himself before God and place his life and future in God's hands.

In his sermon, Charles Spurgeon contends that for every deep, there is a corresponding deep. Deep human depravity calls to deep divine forgiveness. The deep demand of justice calls to the deep sacrifice of Jesus.

It makes me think of the allegory of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, when Aslan says, 'Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written.'

I continue to ponder the truth "deep calls to deep", but one thing I notice in all comparisons, God is the source of all things both deep and good.