Tuesday,
February 7, 2023
O Lord, God of
my salvation, I cry out to you by day. I
come to you at night. Now
hear my prayer; listen to my cry. For
my life is full of troubles, and death draws near. I am as good as dead, like a strong man
with no strength left. They
have left me among the dead, and I lie like a corpse in a grave. I am forgotten, cut off from your care. You have thrown me into the lowest pit, into
the darkest depths. Your
anger weighs me down; with wave after wave you have engulfed me. Interlude
Can those in the grave declare your unfailing love? Can they proclaim your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Can the darkness speak of your wonderful deeds? Can anyone in the land of forgetfulness talk about your righteousness? O Lord, I cry out to you. I will keep on pleading day by day. O Lord, why do you reject me? Why do you turn your face from me? I have been sick and close to death since my youth. I stand helpless and desperate before your terrors. Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me. Your terrors have paralyzed me. They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long. They have engulfed me completely. You have taken away my companions and loved ones. Darkness is my closest friend.
Psalm 88:1-7, 8-10
If contemporary worship gurus wrote hymns these days, this one would never make the list. this song even has choir notes: Sing it to the suffering tune. In today's culture worship requires "happy and up-beat." Not so in Psalm 88!
Excepting the first 6 words (O Lord, God of my salvation) the Psalm is pure lament (whining, if you will); the flood of an anguished soul. The Psalmist is laying-out the miserable conditions of his life and, standing in the death of his emptiness, demanding an answer, Can the darkness speak? Give me a little light on the subject, here, God! What’s up with this life of mine?
Ever done that? Have you ever laid it out there
for God to speak out of the darkness of your existence? If you
haven’t, or at least if your personal lament hasn’t been quite as gruesome as
Psalm 88, let Scripture remind us today that the worst possible scenario has
already been center stage for God’s answers.
The people which sat in darkness saw
great light; and to them which sat in the
region and shadow of death light is sprung up. Matthew 4:16 (KJV)
Matthew ties the life of Jesus to
Isaiah’s prophecy that a great light, God’s light on a dark world, would come
to cover even the shadow of death. While
we remember that Jesus came to bring light and life, sometimes our personal
darkness is so overwhelming. Can that darkness we face really
speak? Does it say anything worthwhile? Does it have meaning?
Do you recall the man who asked Jesus
to heal his son? Mark 9 Jesus brought up the issue of faith to
a man facing the darkness of losing his child. The man said, I
believe…help me out of my unbelief. Sometimes the greatest
darkness is meant to frame the light we’ve been missing; it comes to display
our unbelief and the pathway home to faith.
For You Today
Father, in this day there may be
darkness ahead. When I’m stumbling around let faith light whichever
pathway brings me to you.
There are about 2,000 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper on
today’s topic, explore some of these:
Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers? and Bi-Polar Prayers
This is an updated version of “Can
the Darkness Speak?” published on Rocky Road Devotions August 13, 2013
Images: Title Pixabay.com Images without citation are either personal
property of the author, or in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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