Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Allison. Today's scripture offers us a wiser way of being human as we step into the day.

There are a few experiences more unsettling in the life of faith than realizing that God, who once felt close, alive, and present now feels distant. Not absent in theory, but absent in

experience. The prayers don't land the same way. Words feel hollow and something in you

wonders whether this distance means something has gone wrong. Today's reading is Psalm 42 1 through 5.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food

day and night, while people say to me all day long, where is your God?

These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the mighty one with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.

Why, my soul, are you downcast?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and my God. Psalm 42 opens with a longing that feels almost physical as the dear pants.

So my soul pants for you, my God. Many of us know the familiar worship song that begins with this line,

and it's beautiful, but it doesn't quite capture the ache that runs through the whole psalm.

This isn't the voice of someone who feels close to God. It's the voice of someone who misses feeling close to God. There are seasons when faith feels dry, not because we've failed,

not because we've done something wrong. Often it's because something in us is changing. In the

Christian spiritual tradition, writers have described what they call the dark night of the soul,

not as a loss of faith, but a deepening of it.

And that distinction is important, because if you're in a hard season, you don't need

spiritual cliches and you also don't need to mislabel what's happening in you.

A dark night is often experienced as spiritual dryness. It can feel like God is quiet. Prayer feels flat.

The practices that used to comfort you don't land the same way. You still may be able to function

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