When “darkness is my closest friend”: Reflections on Psalm 88
I was in a meeting a while back where a man said that he and his family had been living in Psalm 88 for a fair while – especially in v18b. Naturally I had to look it up. The tone of his comment had alerted me to expect something that fell a long way short of cheerful, and my instinct was right. The psalm is hauntingly sad. While it starts hopefully (“you are the God who saves me” – v1), it finishes in a very different place, speaking about abandonment, rejection and suffering, before finishing with the sobering conclusion that “darkness is my closest...
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