Song for sorrowers

We are not the first people to ask ‘where is God?’ when unspeakable agonies grip our souls. But it is something of a surprise to have help not in the form of direct theological teaching but in the Psalms, in the form of songs and prayers.

‘Ten minutes into our trip home I noticed an oncoming car on a lonely stretch of highway driving extremely fast. I slowed down at a curve, but the other car did not. It jumped its lane and smashed head-on into our minivan. I learned later that the alleged driver was drunk, driving at 85mph.

‘I remember those first moments after the accident... They are frozen into my memory with a terrible vividness. The scene was chaotic. I remember the look of terror on the faces of my children and the feeling of horror that swept over me when I saw the unconscious and broken bodies of Lynda (my wife), my four-year-old daughter Diana Jane, and my mother. I remember getting Catherine (then eight), David (seven) and John (two) out of the van. I remember taking pulses, doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, trying to save the dying and calm the living. I remember the feeling of panic as I watched my wife, my mother and my daughter all die before my eyes. I remember the pandemonium that followed — people gawking, lights flashing from emergency vehicles. And I remember the realisation sweeping over me that I would soon plunge into a darkness from which I might never again emerge as a sane, normal, believing man’ (A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Crows through Loss by Gerald L. Sittser).

No more difficult question

You will be able think of your own stories of tragic loss, just as I can. For some, it will be your own experiences that leave you, even now, alone in the small hours of the morning with just your grief. In the light of tragedy, is there any more difficult question to answer than ‘Where is a God of goodness and love and compassion?’

You may have noticed the heading to the Psalm, ‘For the director of music’. So these words of pain that we read are meant to be sung. I called this article, ‘What can sorrowing Christians sing?’, because isn’t it the case that so many of our hymns seem to be unremittingly happy and if you come to church not feeling happy, but instead feel your soul twisted with pain out of all recognition then it’s possible to end up feeling guilty that you don’t feel happy! You end up adding another level of distress to your pain, and Psalm 88 is here to say there is something you can sing in your pain.

Looking twice

I want us to go through the passage twice — once simply to feel its darkness and to immerse ourselves in the writer’s pain. Why is he feeling the way he is? It’s only by doing so that we’re able to get hold of the help that it offers.

We’re going to look at three things the Psalmist is going through. But then I want us to take a step back and next time we’re going to look at some things which we might have missed and see four incredibly helpful applications which I pray will help us enormously.

Let me tell you about a structural feature of the Psalm that helps us dig into its meaning. Most psalms are written in what we call parallelism: each verse has two lines which often seem to say the same thing in different ways. Look at verse 3: ‘For my soul is full of trouble’ (first line) — another way of saying that is, ‘my life draws near the grave’ (second line).

But now notice this — the second line of the verse isn’t simply a way of just saying the same thing as the first line. The second line actually intensifies the first line. It’s a way of saying: this is true (line 1) but, what’s more, this is also true (line 2), and the second line often raises the stakes. So, verse 16: ‘Your wrath has swept over me’, but, what’s more: ‘your terrors have destroyed me. All day long’, verse 17, ‘they surround me like a flood’. But notice — I’m not safe while your terrors simply surround me; what’s more I am completely engulfed.

So the poetry draws us in line by line to see an aspect of despair and each time that we think that’s bad, then comes the second line and says you haven’t seen the half of it yet. It gets worse.

1. Life without living

First of all the Psalmist is experiencing life without living — isn’t that such a stark situation — to be physically alive, your heart beating, but your soul is so tortured that you might as well be dead. We begin to see this in verse 3. I’m a dying man, Lord, that’s what he’s saying — notice how three times he tells us I am, the verb to be — I am here, I am alive — but the only things about me and my existence are things associated with death. And look at the way the parallelism works in verse 5 — not only is it that I might as well be dead, lying in a grave, but, worse than that, I’m like someone you’ve forgotten and don’t care about.

Do you see what the writer’s saying? Lord, my whole life feels like I’m camped on the very edge of hell, written off as a lost cause, one more statistic, abandoned as if already dead — and not so much as a gravestone.

Many commentators think that what the writer is describing here is his experience of dying because of the disease of leprosy. That’s what they reckon is behind the language of verse 8 about how he has become repulsive to his friends, and what’s more, verse 15, this is a disease he has had from the start of his life: death has stalked him from the cradle.

Most of us reach the time in our life when we are confronted by death, and often it comes in our old age. But he is saying I never remember a time when death wasn’t right there beside me.

But aren’t you glad that we’re not actually told what the precise affliction was? We’re not often told in many of the other Psalms and I think God designed them so — because if we knew this was leprosy then wouldn’t we be tempted to think it doesn’t apply to me? But because the language is general it speaks more widely to our pains.

In his very moving book, Lament for a Son, written following the death of his 25-year-old son, Nicholas Wolterstorff describes the funeral service with beautiful words, but then comes to describe the committal at the graveside: ‘I buried myself that warm June day. It was me those gardeners lowered on squeaking straps into that hot dry hole, curious neighbourhood children looking down at me, everyone stilled, wind rustling the oaks. It was me we left behind, after reading Psalms’.

Getting up each day, going through the motions, eating, washing; but in your heart there is piercing pain which nothing numbs. Alive but not living — such is the intensity of the pain.

2. Death without hope

Notice as well that the Psalmist is facing death without hope: you see it particularly in verses 10-12. This is the writer prosecuting God, cross-examining him: I want to be able to praise you, I want to proclaim your love and your faithfulness — but how can I do it if I’m dead? Once I die that’s it, it’s over — and what he’s saying is this: therefore your love, your faithfulness, your wonders they will die with me too Lord — there’s no hope for them beyond the grave.

One of the main ways he expresses this is his fear of God’s wrath resting on him, verse 7, but he does it with the imagery of floodwaters overwhelming him. His life is like living in a constant experience of drowning (v.17) and once he’s dead then he feels there will be no hope for him. God’s wrath and anger are resting on him.

Notice again: the writer is facing death without hope but the imagery of floodwaters and drowning speaks to any experience of intense grief that leaves us feeling like we’re suffocating and gasping for air. This is what it feels like when death destroys hope.

3. Questions without answers

The Psalmist seeks but receives no answers. Most commentators call this the saddest of the Psalms. There is only one note of hope and it’s in the very first verse: ‘O Lord the God who saves me’. But, of course, it’s actually this note of hope which creates the problem. If you’re the God who saves me — why aren’t you doing so?

The language in verses 1 and 2 of crying out to God really refers to a tortured, incessant wail, screaming in pain. And notice the way he puts it: I want my prayer to come before you’ (vv.1,2). You need to stop what you’re doing God and turn towards me — turn your ear to my cry. You’re not even looking at me (v.14).

My children love it when we play hide and seek, and their joy comes when I appear again from wherever it is I’m hiding. Imagine how cruel it would be to play hide and seek with them and, as we are playing, to get in the car and drive off leaving them looking for me but with no possibility of finding me. Why are you doing that, Lord?

And not only has God turned from him, but so has everyone else (v.18): ‘You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; and darkness is my closest friend’. The darkness is always there for me, God, because you are not.

This article is used with permission.

David Gibson

© Evangelicals Now - July 2010
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