Sometimes Life Sucks: Psalm 88
September 26, 2024
There are 18 verses in Psalm 88. Save for verse 13, not a single positive thought is expressed. Everything is disastrous. Nothing good anywhere. Plus, the psalmist all but blames God: ‘When are you going to pour out your loving-kindness—when I’m dead?’ He makes the point repeatedly.
Look those verses over. You can’t find a positive thought. Except for 13: “But I still cry to you for help, O Jehovah, Each morning my prayer comes before you.” Though, he immediately follows up (verse 14) that it does him no good: “Why, O Jehovah, do you reject me? Why do you hide your face from me?” The question is nowhere answered. He has tried the “peace of God will safeguard your heart” thing. It hasn’t worked, and so he tells God about it!
Psalm 88 is just like the Book of Job, but without the preface pulling back the heavenly curtain to explain what it’s all about. What is this psalm even doing in the Bible, which is overall a book of faith? You could easily get all cynical over it, were that your inclination. Nowhere is the psalmist’s faith rewarded. But it is steadfast, if only by force of habit, per verse 13. Is it the more powerful on that account? Life is not consistently rosy. It can be horrendous for the long periods of time.
There is precious little commentary on this psalm from the JW Library app, which likes to focus on the positive. No wonder. There’s nothing positive here, save for the verse about hanging in there with prayer. ‘Sometimes we have to wait awhile’ is the gist of the Library’s sole remark (on 13). There’s one other remark, too, but it is simply the definition of a term.
The fellow is going through a trough. Sometimes we are in troughs. Don’t feel unique if it has ever happened to you. The ground has been plowed before. If you have ever felt as the psalmist, don’t feel bad. Or, at least, don’t feel guilty about feeling bad. Part of the roller coaster of life, someone said during field service, which delivers both good times and bad.
It reminded me of how the circuit overseer said he would get carsick as a boy. The solution? Fix your gaze far off into the horizon, the one thing that does not change. So it is that the psalmist fixes his gaze upon God to carry him through a rough period of life.
****** The bookstore
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