The Saddest Psalm
Even in their apparent futility the psalms of lament offer comfort in their structure: honest anguish comes full circle to humble trust; fatigued wrestling is strengthened with hopeful courage.
The pattern gives scaffolding to our faith and models for us how to act with our doubt, despair and desperation. Lest we get glib with these psalms or simply nod in time as we counterfeit relationship with formula-fed legalism, we are confronted with Psalm 88.
It’s the saddest psalm.
Psalm 88 is more blues than the blues. It howls. It sits there, right in the middle of the book, unmissable. It’s like Job sitting in the rubble of his decaying life… a psalm that scratches at its ashen sores with broken pottery — agony across its face.
Best you sit with this psalm awhile.
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We’ve seen pain like this somewhere before. Is this the agony that Jesus felt?
Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” [Jn 12:27-28]
The writer is in a dark pit. He doesn’t see any light, but he hints at it, like a reflex, in verse 11: your faithfulness, your steadfast love. That’s what we hold on to. Not what God can do for us, but who He is.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. [Ps 139:11-12]
For God, the darkness is not dark.
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Psalm 88 offers no neat resolution. It deviates from the pattern we see in the psalms of lament.
It’s an exception.
It says: “Don’t get cocky with this; you need to pay attention.”
It sits with Job who, screaming for answers, gets silence.
It kneels with Christ in the garden, sweating blood, volunteering his perfection for filth (and him alone to bring it all together).
It hangs with the thief on the cross who, dying, gets more life than he can dream of.
Psalm 88 is the presence of God in his absence.
Don’t get familiar with this; you need to pay attention.
For God, the darkness is not dark.
Psalm 88 rings out like an unresolved chord.