JOURNAL ~ PsalmsНамуна

NOTHING BUT DARKNESS - Day 2

Many of us selectively edit our reading of the Psalms and forget about the ones we don't like. I hope in what follows we may see how reading all the Psalms, even those which seem depressing and repugnant to us, is part of allowing God into all areas of our lives and the difficult realities of those lives.

William Penn, the Quaker real estate magnate and founder of the state of Pennsylvania prayed: “O Lord, help us not despise what we do not understand.” 

Penn’s statement encapsulates Psalm 88.  As we read, we will see that the prayer does not offer any kind of resolution. The idea of not despising one’s circumstances that come from intimate knowledge of “the One who knows why” is echoed twice in the Psalm: first in the opening plea in verse 1: Lord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you,” and second in the last part of verse 9:
I call to you, Lord, every day; I spread out my hands to you.

If we read the Psalm closely we can see that the prayer to this savior is offered by the psalter day and night, yet it is not answered. The prayer ends anticlimactically with: you have taken from me friend and neighbor—darkness is my closest friend.

But here is the gospel in this dark Psalm: in our world we find no shortage of suffering, and this prayer gives a voice to all who are in the depths of suffering. A prayer that invokes the name of our savior God, so the Psalmist believed, does not rise up in vain. As for the rest of us who are not experiencing suffering, this prayer is a way for us to enter into the sufferings of others, and in loving sympathy pray on their behalf.