88: God’s Dark, Messy, Painful Gift
Last week when I suggested you might like to pull into a space and put the car in park for seven days, letting God speak out of the same place over and over and over, I thought it a good idea to pick a new place to park myself. I’d hardly worn a path through Psalm 84 in the ten days I wandered there, but it was time nonetheless.
Neck deep in Matt Woodley’s anguished chapter on “Prayer as Mystery” (The Folly of Prayer: Practicing the Presence and Absence of God), I turned the page over to 88, a psalm of lament from Heman the Ezrahite. And I wondered why God would find it brilliant for me to hang out for any length of time in this seething black pit of despair.
Still, that’s where God pointed; that’s where I’d stay. The lights have burned brightly of late, and it seemed harmless enough. Strange, though, to try to engage a lament when, at the present moment, one doesn’t feel particularly sorrowful.
Enter the benefit of a seven-day stay: Stick around long enough, and it works its way through you.
The Word is like that.
The first couple of days were easy. Oh, look, I thought. Even in his anguish, the psalmist knew that darkness comes from God’s absence — real or perceived. He knows only God will bring him light and life. Good job, Heman. I patted Heman the psalmist on the head and gave him an attaboy for his display of maturity in the midst of despair.
But as the week wore on, my condescension toward the Ezrahite faded and instead I poked at him a little with my elbow, nudging him over so I could take a seat with him there in the dark.
I wanted to keep playing the psalm like a continuous loop recording. I’d see Heman get to the end and barely gasp out the final words, “You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.” And every time, my eyes raced back up to the opening words of his lament before the darkness could catch hold, “O Lord, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you.”
Twice more during the psalm he would declare his trust, reminding God he was there crying out to Him, morning after morning. But Heman didn’t end at the beginning, hoping in the God who saves him. Heman penned the last words still drowning in his pain.
He experienced no rescue, no comfort, no relief.
Woodley observes that 88 breaks the rules:
Every other psalm of lament eventually returns to hope and trust in God. The psalmist cries out to God in his pain; he even yells and argues with God. But the prayer softens as he calmly proclaims, “But still I will trust you, God.” Psalm 88 is the exception to that pattern. In this prayer the psalmist cries out to God; he’s sincere; he believes the right things about God — but help doesn’t seem to come. . . . This prayer trails off in unresolved tension, doubt, hurt, anguish and mystery.” (The Folly of Prayer, page 58, emphasis added)
After one day’s reading, I noted in my margin, Rinse, repeat, as though by just going back to the start desperate Heman’s darkness would dispel.
And, perhaps, might mine.
Another day I reminded myself to fight back the darkness. You can do better than Heman, I thought. Just fight it back.
When the psalmist observed that he had been “set apart with the dead” and wondered aloud if God would show Himself to the dead, or if the dead could rise to praise Him or even if His wonders could be “known in the place of darkness,” I remembered that God can make the darkness itself shine. As though to argue with Heman, I scrawled 139 in the margin. Remember Heman? Remember that?
And then one day I looked to the left hand column in my text. I often switch over to my second language, my favorite language, when God and I meet up. For reasons I don’t yet understand, I give God more freedom to speak to my heart there. And my soul seems to reach into a richer, but more raw honesty with Him.
As I look back at my margin scrawl, I notice it was then that I stopped talking to Heman and started talking to me. No more patronizing, no more chastising the lamenting psalmist. When he cried out Ya no puedo más (I can’t do it anymore), I responded in kind: Yo me siento así (I feel like that). I too lamented about close friendship with tinieblas (darkness) and the oscuridad (blackness) that seemed to fill me.
I listened to my heart a while, and felt my anger rise on about Day 5 that Heman would leave the psalm ending this way.
The darkness didn’t lift. God didn’t answer.
It didn’t resolve.
But when I quit trying to fix the psalmist, and when I let go trying to force light and resolution on him, I saw what Matt Woodley was talking about. In 88 God gave us unanswered prayer.
He gave us His silence.
And He lets us live with it.
Woodley says this:
God views the mystery of unanswered prayer with the utmost seriousness. God doesn’t fear my questions and dark emotions. God even provides the words I need to express my agony back to him. (p. 59)
88 lets us believe that sometimes, even though we believe right, think right, live right, we’ll still come face to face with the tinieblas. 88 gives us a framework to believe that we can say these things to God. His own hot breath penned these words through His servant Heman.
And in so doing, Woodley tells us, that “Psalm 88 is God’s dark, messy, painful gift to us.” (p. 58)
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This post attempts to capture my latest 7-Days-in-a-Psalm experience. Last week we talked about trying this, letting God speak from the same place for seven days in a row. If you took a crack at it, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment box. (If you posted at your own place, let me know and we’ll link you here.)
What did God say? Did you notice a progression over the week’s time? What did you find difficult? What did you find sweet?
And how do you feel about this unresolved lament, this “dark, messy, painful gift” God gave us in Psalm 88?
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For starters, check these out:
- Jennifer’s post on her 7-day challenge over at Getting Down with Jesus, where God used what she thought was a “miserable failure” to show her true rest, Jesus-style.
- Laura’s using one of my very favorite words in the whole world at the Wellspring today.
- Becky went a full nine days over at Daily on My Way to Heaven, and God appeared!
- Jennifer posted over at Quail and Manna on Psalm 46, while watching Louisiana looking a lot like the un-creation of the earth.
Thanks everybody! Your thoughts encourage me!
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Lyla,
Thank you for the challenge I wrote about it at my place.
http://bit.ly/czxIAG
Blessings!
2010/07/09 at 8:26 AM
Becky, thanks! Love your post and seeing Him appear!
2010/07/09 at 12:31 PM
Lyla:
Great post. Great insight. Often, unanswered prayer is answered prayer. It just isn’t our answer or the answer we expect.
We attende services with your brother and his family a couple of months ago. Their pastor, Bill Bohline, in his sermon, left me with the following statement. I don’t know if it is his but he did not give us any attribution. I liked it because the scriptures so often use the contrast of darkness and light.
“Never doubt in the darkness what God has shown you in the light of day”.
Dad
2010/07/09 at 9:16 AM
Dad, unanswered prayer is mystery — this is what I’m reading. But this quote you share, I think I’ve heard my friend Deb quote this before — these are words that get me out of bed some days.
2010/07/09 at 12:32 PM
I’ve been doing the challenge with two different Psalms. One of them, surprisingly, is Psalm 84. Hmmm. Interesting. I wrote about it briefly at the blog today but not in detail. It’s been a pretty personal experience and may I thank you for recommending it? Perhaps I will post more soon.
This post. Lyla. Wow. I love how deep you go with Him. The darkness has been such a part of my life. It’s part of what God has been whispering to me through these two scriptures. I’m staying there a while longer. Need to for now.
Anyway, love to you, lady.
2010/07/09 at 11:24 AM
Laura, Becky said the same in her post — some things were too much between her and Jesus to share. I find the same, especially when letting myself go into it for an extended time. He’s so able to cut through and work and speak deep. I actually have a harder time writing on those times than when I skirt and skim, because I want to hold some of that a little closer.
So glad you’re staying put a little longer. And your posts at your place and the Muck today spoke.
2010/07/09 at 12:36 PM
i came by from Laura’s place (wellspring). I absolutely LOVE this. i have done it before, but not this intentionally…to read through the same passage for several days. I am going to start with a psalm tomorrow morning! looking forward to what God speaks over me in it these next 7 days!
2010/07/10 at 9:18 PM
Hey Lyla–I know I’m “behind” your other readers, but I took the 7 day challenge, too. I just got started a couple days late. My response is at my blog: http://quailandmanna.blogspot.com. This has just been awesome–reading what God has done through these other readers is amazing–how God can speak when we just stop and park it for awhile.
2010/07/11 at 8:23 PM
Mariel, thanks so much — rich psalming to you this week!
Jennifer, I’m so glad you jumped in! Never late. Appreciated your thoughts on uncreation up against the Uncreated One!
2010/07/11 at 8:38 PM
This is so good, Lyla. Really, really good. And perfect for me just now.
Funny, but my pattern has been to continuously read through the Bible. That was interrupted in January, and by February I found myself firmly camped in Isaiah 40. By June I’d memorized the chapter, and found things in it that would have never emerged in a day or so.
I still read all parts of the Bible. But for now I’m camped in Romans 8. I’ve made up my mind to also memorize this incredible chapter. I’m excited to see what comes of spending a long time in one place.
I’m so impressed with you and Heman. How rich you’ve now made this Psalm for me. Thank you.
2010/07/12 at 1:53 PM
Anne, I’m with you, reading all the parts is essential. But allowing God’s Spirit, as you’ve done here in Isaiah 40 and now Romans 8, to stop you a while, and to continue to meditate on those same words, I don’t know how I could do without that.
I’d be willing to put down serious money that the next time you wander into Isaiah 40, He’ll say something new again. And that you’re memorizing at the same time, I love that. What better way to really camp out.
2010/07/12 at 4:22 PM
ack, Lyla , I hit publish on my post too soon , and wonder what you read.
2010/07/12 at 10:15 PM
Lyla, thank you for reminding me of so many things on so many levels in this post.
I want to write more but my mind is racing now.
From a very young age, I have come to deeply revere and respect His silence. It is in His silence that I most fully understand the cross.
2010/07/13 at 4:21 AM
Deb, it was all good. All good. I just got the early edition, I guess.
Claire, it’s interesting you’d say that. Because just before the cross, Jesus came fully face to face with that silence, in the garden and from there forward. He endured a silence from His Father I don’t think we’ll ever come close to. That does lend some deeper understanding of the Cross. Thank for that.
2010/07/13 at 8:46 AM