Playlist Prompt #27: "Just Want You"

Hello, friends! Today's prompt, courtesy of Rachel, is the song "Just Want You" by Sarah Reeves.

This song - particularly this line: "I don't want it if you're not in it, I just want you" - brought to mind Psalm 42. I only remembered the first verse:

"As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God."

Doesn't that invoke the same theme? All I want is you, God. And it's such a pretty image; you picture a deer by a stream, a calm, quiet scene. But check out the next couple of verses:

"My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?" 

The Psalmist is not describing a mild thirst he's experiencing. This is the kind of thirst you feel after you've been crying for days without drinking water. I don't know what the Psalmist was going through, but whatever it was, it was terrible.

He goes on:

"These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you."

When all he can do is cry his eyes out, he finds comfort and release in remembering what God has done for him in the past. He goes on to describe God's steadfast love and the song that's with him in even the darkest of times.

Sarah Reeves' song talks about wanting God's plan even if it's not her own. The Psalmist surely wishes that he was not going through whatever it is that's troubling him so deeply, but he doesn't ask God to take it away. He has questions, sure:

"I say to God, my rock, "Why have you forgotten me?"

But his questions do not preclude his faith. Even when we feel confused, unsure, afraid, heartbroken, anxious - our faith reminds us that God has been with us before, and he is with us now, and he will always be with us. We can trust his plan.