A Psalm of Lament

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Good to see you again! Thanks for stopping by.

Here's the question and answer from yesterday:
Tuesday: Fill in the blanks: “For to me, to live is _________ and to die is _________.” (Phil 1)
Philippians 1:21 21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

And here's the question of the day:
What is the psalmist’s closest friend? (Psalm 88)

And here's the reflection of the day:
Wow. This is a day of heavy reading in the "Year of the Bible." Not only are we continuing to read through Job, but we also have Psalm 88--a lament of deep, deep suffering.

It ends up being oddly appropriate these are our texts on the day we learn more details about the gunman who shot up the LA Fitness Center in Bridgeville, just outside of Pittsburgh. Could not the families of those wounded and killed pray this psalm today?

Psalm 88 sharply poses paradoxical two statements: the psalmist asserts that God has caused his suffering ("You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape" verse 8), indicating that GOD is the problem (McCann, Jr, NIB Commentary, "Psalms").

But McCann claims that Psalm 88 ALSO declares that God is the solution. He writes, "The psalmist's prayer itself is evidence that she or he is convinced that even life's worst moments somehow have to do with God. So the psalmist's cries continue to arise out of the depths (see Psalm 130:1)."

In the face of tragedies, God is sometimes seen as the problem; frequently, God is seen as the solution. God is inevitably tangled up in the threads of our lives, one way or the other. The anger toward God that often erupts in the midst of tragedy is not a wholly negative thing. That very same anger acknowledges "that even life's worst moments somehow have to do with God."

Though the psalmist is full of anger at God for the circumstances of his life, it is to the very same God he cries out for help and for mercy "from the depths."

I don't think God minds when we cry out to him, even in anger. Because to cry out to him is to acknowledge that, in life's worst moments, God is still involved. . . and present . . . and perhaps even hurting as well.