Feeling Alone (2)

Psa 88:1 LORD God, my savior, I cry out all day, and at night I come before you.
Psa 88:2 Hear my prayer; listen to my cry for help!
Psa 88:3 So many troubles have fallen on me that I am close to death.
Psa 88:4 I am like all others who are about to die; all my strength is gone.

The psalmist wrote a psalm which a lot of Christians must have felt in there life during certain stages before. A cry unto God from your heart, not knowing when or how your life will get better.
This is a cry of unbroken distress. No pious words of trust or hope soften the words of grief, accusation, anger, and questioning. The unusual thing about this Psalm is that the prayer never mitigates the completeness of his plight with any hint of hope or praise. Like Job the psalmist seem to have no hope or have no reason to praise God. This is like when we cry before God as we pray and wishing God will release us from our earthly duty and take us home.

Speaking to God the psalmist ends Psalm 88 with: " You have made even my closest friends abandon me, and darkness is my only companion."
I'm glad we have Psalm 88. There are times and conditions that we experience as unmitigated sadness. There are circumstances that are hopeless to us and seem and feel hopeless.

This Psalm stands to affirm that such expressions of grief are legitimate. It is not faithless to cry out in helpless and hopeless anguish. It is not wrong to place responsibility for such wrongs at the feet of God. And you don't have to appease God with some word of piety, hope or praise.

We can be completely honest toward God with our thoughts and feelings. And God is big enough to take it all. God won't punish us for being hurt and angry, even hurt and angry at God.

In fact, only God can take this kind of suffering. To give it to God might restrain us from internalizing our angry grief into a depression or externalizing by lashing out at someone else. Only God is great enough to take this kind of misery and not compound it. In Psalm 89 it seems as if that dark and lonely moment have passed. In our darkest moment we can cry out to God and just let go and know He understands, just as He know what the outcome will be.

Psa 89:1 "O LORD, I will always sing of your constant love; I will proclaim your faithfulness forever. "