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PSALM 88 - Lamenting Psalm 29 Jan 2020
If you are suffering or have a bad day, I am sure you can relate to today's psalm. Why should someone pray such a sad song?
Sad Song
A first observation is: it is still a song. It expresses my emotion. Perhaps the song may help me to drive out my self-pity. Is this really all I can say about my life? I hope not.
Option 2: Can't find God
If I am out of touch with God or can't find the source of life, then psalm 88 is an honest song usable to seek God. Those are his own words, a part of the bible.
Psalm 88
1 [Song Psalm Of the sons of Korah.
In sickness. In suffering. Poem. For Heman the native-born]
Yahweh, God of my salvation,
when I cry out to you in the night,
2 may my prayer reach your presence,
hear my cry for help.
3 For I am filled with misery,
my life is on the brink of Sheol;
4 already numbered among those who sink into oblivion,
I am as one bereft of strength,
5 left alone among the dead,
like the slaughtered lying in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
cut off as they are from your protection.
6 You have plunged me to the bottom of the grave,
in the darkness, in the depths;
7 weighted down by your anger,
kept low by your waves. Pause
8 You have deprived me of my friends,
made me repulsive to them,
imprisoned, with no escape;
9 my eyes are worn out with suffering.
I call to you, Yahweh,
all day, I stretch out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead,
can shadows rise up to praise you? Pause
11 Do they speak in the grave of your faithful love,
of your constancy in the place of perdition?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
your saving justice in the land of oblivion?
13 But, for my part, I cry to you, Yahweh,
every morning my prayer comes before you;
14 why, Yahweh, do you rebuff me,
turn your face away from me?
15 Wretched and close to death since childhood,
I have borne your terrors -- I am finished!
16 Your anger has overwhelmed me,
your terrors annihilated me.
17 They flood around me all day long,
close in on me all at once.
18 You have deprived me of friends and companions,
and all that I know is the dark.
Excerpt from THE NEW JERUSALEM BIBLE, copyright (c) 1985 by
Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd. and Doubleday, a division
of Penguin Random House, Inc. Reprinted by Permission.
Please Smile Afterwards.