Psalm 88

This psalm reads like a fairly standard lament... until the last verse. I am unsettled by it. I think I actually gasped a little when I read it- darkness is my closest friend. Who ends a psalm that way?

Clearly one who knows what that feels like. If you buy into the consumer attitude of spirituality today, you will believe that once you "acquire" God (or whatever you want in the spiritual realm), you will be set. You will have it made. You will love the verse "If God is for us, who can be against us?" because it will give you the comfort that your relationship with God is locked into the "awesome" setting and is static. As the people of Israel found out, a relationship with God is both steady and dynamic. Israelites, as well as Christians over the ages, discovered that we experience God differently at different times. This speaks against the consumer attitude.

Indeed, people of faith sometimes have a close friend in darkness. Perhaps you can point to a time when darkness was a good friend. Darkness hides, and sometimes we want only to hide. So we wear the darkness like a costume, immersing ourselves in the malaise in order to hide the mysterious (and possibly painful) healing process. Indeed, darkness hides. But darkness is a fickle friend. Darkness will hide you for only so long. Eventually, the darkness wants to hide things from you. Hope can be swallowed up in darkness. We can only be sustained for so long without hope- an imagined future better than our present and perceived reality. So may hope in the God who saves be breathed into your areas of darkness today.