Psalm 88 and the God Who Meets Us within the Darkish — Church Anew

So let’s not clear the psalm up.
Let’s not rush to rescue it.
It gained’t allow us to.

The psalmist feels entombed whereas nonetheless respiratory—minimize off, deserted by God and pals alike. And if we’re trustworthy—brutally trustworthy—many people know precisely what that appears like. Not the “somebody took my parking spot” sort of hardship, however the form that rearranges your bones.

As a doctor, I’ve witnessed a substantial amount of human struggling.
I’ve heard the painful cries of a mom who has misplaced her little one.
I’ve seen a sister brush her brother’s hair one final time, her palms trembling with the burden of what she couldn’t change.
I’ve watched accidents and diseases overturn folks’s lives straight away.

Only a few weeks in the past, I handled a middle-aged man with chest ache—robust, stoic, the sort of man who apologizes for bleeding.

However whereas we waited for his labs, he immediately broke down into deep, chest-heaving sobs. Between breaths he informed me his spouse had died two months earlier.

He’d been sleeping in her recliner as a result of their mattress felt like a betrayal. He hadn’t prayed because the funeral as a result of he felt God had left him within the room with the lights off.

“Doc,” he mentioned, “I’m not afraid of dying.
I’m afraid I’ll by no means really feel something once more.”

He didn’t want my medical experience in that second.
He wanted permission to say what Psalm 88 shouts from the rafters:

“This hurts greater than I can bear.
I don’t see God’s hand reaching out, and I’m drowning right here.”

That is the very floor Psalm 88 was written on.

However here’s what we regularly overlook:
Psalm 88’s despair is definitely its deepest confession of religion.

Discover one thing simply missed on this psalm:

It by no means stops praying.

The psalmist says,
“I cry out to you day and evening.”
“Within the morning my prayer comes earlier than you.”

Psalm 88 teaches one thing on the coronary heart of religion:
Generally the holiest factor you are able to do is maintain speaking to God whenever you don’t really feel God speaking again.

This isn’t weak religion.
This isn’t faulty religion.
That is cruciform religion—religion formed just like the cross, religion that lives the place Jesus lived: within the darkness between “My God, my God” and “It’s completed.”

Luther insisted that God’s most profound work occurs below the other of its look:
power hidden below weak point,
glory hidden below struggling,
love hidden below what appears like abandonment.

Psalm 88 shouldn’t be proof of God’s absence;
it reveals the place God chooses to satisfy us—
and generally that’s within the valley, not on the mountaintop.

Struggling varieties us, not as a result of it’s good, however as a result of God refuses to waste it.

Within the early 90s, scientists in Arizona carried out the Biosphere 2 experiment, making a sealed atmosphere meant to duplicate life in area—a world with out wind. They found that timber couldn’t mature; they grew till they fell over. With out wind, timber couldn’t develop what’s known as “stress wooden,” the deep root power that enables them to outlive.

Human beings are the identical.
Our roots develop in climate, not in local weather management.

And Psalm 88 reminds us that God doesn’t take away the wind—
however God stands beside us within the storm.

Not as a result of ache is holy, however as a result of Christ refuses to go away us alone in our struggling. Like my affected person who ultimately mentioned,

“I nonetheless don’t really feel God… however I believe God feels me.”

Psalm 88 ends in darkness, however Scripture doesn’t.

Right here is the excellent news:

Our hope doesn’t come from our potential to climb to God.
Our hope comes from the God who joins us in our valleys.

Jesus doesn’t wait till Easter morning to satisfy us.
He descends first—into dying, into hell, right into a psalm like this that ends with out decision.

That is the Gospel:
God’s love reaches deeper than our despair.
Even after we can’t see it.
Even after we can’t really feel it.
Even when our prayer is only a tear.

Paul places it this fashion in Romans 5:
“Struggling produces perseverance, perseverance character, character hope—
and hope doesn’t put us to disgrace.”

Why?
As a result of that hope shouldn’t be our achievement.
It’s one thing poured into us—grace that’s given, not earned.

Psalm 88 leaves us at midnight.
However the God of the cross does God’s finest work at midnight.
Once we grieve, God is there.
Once we doubt, God is there.
Once we shout at heaven, God is there—listening, receiving, holding, and shaping.