Psalm 88 - Overwhelmed

Read: Psalm 88 vs 1-18

Today we come to Psalm 88. It is a difficult Psalm. These are the words of someone who believes and someone who trusts: ‘LORD, you are the God who saves me.’

That opening line, anchors this Psalm in the life of faith. Every one of the Psalms calls out to God from the ‘inside’, these are the songs, the poems, the prayers of God’s people. This person believes, in that sense this Psalm does not represent a struggle to find faith, but rather it gives us words in an intense and deeply personal struggle to find hope.

‘Day and night’ this person (named in the title as Heman the Ezrahite) cries out to God. Heman was a musician appointed by David to lead God’s people in praise (1 Chronicles 16:41-42). But Psalm 88 is not a ‘praise song’ and its not written about, or for, someone else. These words feel very personal, very first hand. Heman is overwhelmed with troubles and he has this huge fear that his life is nearing its end (vs 3). Strength is gone (vs 4). He has lost his closest friends (vs 8), and he feels completely hemmed in by a grief that he cannot escape (vs 9). 

Yet every day he calls to the LORD. Every morning he prays. This is real and raw: ‘Why, LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?’ (vs 14).

Many of the Psalms express desperate cries of the heart but time and again they end with an affirmation of trust or praise. Psalm ends in what is literally a ‘dark place’ where Heman writes: ‘Darkness is my closest friend.’

Learning to read the Bible is a little bit like reading a novel or watching a film that we have seen before. When we read Psalm 88 we know there is more to come. The story does not end in vs 18. We believe in a Lord who has stepped into this deeply broken world and defeated the last enemy, death itself (1 Corinthians 15:26). In Jesus we have a resurrection faith, in grief there is intense hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). But Psalm 88 is part of the story and it names the feelings and fears of faithful people and transforms them into words of faith, cries to God Himself, the One who saves. So we read and pray these difficult words not as ‘final words’ but as words along the way. These words point to the One who is the ultimate answer to this Psalm’s cry. Death stands at the centre of all that we believe, but not our death, the death of another, and in Him we have great hope (Hebrews 2:15).