Baca means: place of weeping, valley of misery.

I like this verse, but on my first reading I thought it meant I should be all cheery in the Valley of Baca (Psalm 84:6). When that didn’t happen, I wondered what was the matter with me? On further reading, I realized I had misunderstood the true blessing. The main point of the psalm is not about circumstances, or depression, or grief, it’s about nearness of God:

My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. (Psalm 84:2)

The blessing, the springs of water are found in “God with us,” Immanuel. When I meditate on Immanuel, letting my heart and soul dwell upon “God is with me,” the pain and fear are somehow less. An old Scandinavian proverb states: “A joy shared is twice the joy. A sorrow shared is half the sorrow.” How true when you share it with God.