and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bounti- fully with me.2
T e words of the psalm
are heart-rending. T e plaintive repetition of “How long,” the cry that death will result if God does not answer, the expression of fear that enemies will triumph, all communicate the direness of the psalmist’s situation and the sense of abandonment by God he or she feels. Yet the fi nal strophe sings with confi dence and trust. Having trusted in God’s love in the past, the psalmist knows he or she will rejoice in God’s salvation in the future.
Psalm 88. In stark contrast,
Psalm 88 ends in total darkness, off ering no hope and no future. T e one praying continually cries out to God: “at night, I cry out in your presence (v. 1); “Every day I call on you” (v. 9); “in the morn- ing my prayer comes before you” (v. 13). T ere is no break in the prayer. Yet God persists in cast- ing the psalmist aside, hiding the divine face (v. 14). Even more painful, what is threatening the psalmist is not human enemies, or human evil, or disease, or debility. T e psalmist’s adversary is God:
Psalm 88 is supremely disorientating for those who believe God listens to every cry for help. In this psalm God is not listening; even more disconcerting, God is the cause of the extreme suff ering being undergone by the one praying.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves.
You have caused my compan- ions to shun me;
you have made me a thing of horror to them (v. 7-8a).
Your wrath has swept over me; your dread assaults destroy me.
T ey surround me like a fl ood all day long;
from all sides they close in on me (vv. 16-17).
As far as God is concerned,
the one praying might as well be dead (vv. 10-12). T e last verse of the psalm communicates how utterly cut off the psalmist feels: “You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my com- panions are in darkness” (v. 18). No hope is expressed, no trust that God will ultimately inter- vene to save, no surety that even other human beings will act on the psalmist’s behalf. T e NIV translation captures this feeling of having been utterly abandoned by God even more eloquently: “my companions are darkness.” Psalm 88 is supremely dis-
__________________________________________________________________________________________________ January-February 2014 • WorshipArts •
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orientating for those who believe God listens to every cry for help. In this psalm God is not listening; even more disconcerting, God is the cause of the extreme suff ering being undergone by the one pray- ing. What are we to make of such a prayer?
the dark night is not ours person- ally, praying Psalm 88 unites our hearts and minds with all those, far or near, next door or across the ocean, sitting beside us at the family dinner table or scrabbling for food in Haiti, who are suff er- ing such sense of abandonment by God. We become the prayer they cannot be at this time. And when
5 To begin with, we need to
recognize it as our prayer. T e “dark night of the soul” is a real human experience spoken about by the mystics and experienced by every human being undergo- ing extreme physical, spiritual, or psychological duress. I am reminded of a friend admitted to the psych ward of a major rehabili- tation center in the Midwest who said she spent the fi rst twenty-four hours curled up under a table in the hallway. In her darkness, she sang over and over, “Where are you, God? I am here, but where are you?” Another patient brought her a blanket and pillow, saying, “You’re going to be under there a long time. You’ll be needing these.” I am also reminded of the Nige- rian member in my religious order who was kidnapped by revolution- aries, then beaten, brutalized, and raped for three days before being dumped barely alive on the side of the road. During those three days, her prayer could well have been a version of Psalm 88. Even when the experience of
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