"Darkness has become my friend" (Psalm 88:18).
This is the saddest song in the psalter, a mournful dirge with no praise, no thanksgiving, no celebration, no eulogy. The poet’s soul was “full of trouble"; his dark mood all-engulfing.
There are days like that.
Some tell us we should never have bad days, but they wrong us when they do. “God has not promised skies always blue, flower-strewn pathways, all our lives through; God hath not promised sun without rain, Joy without sorrow, peace without pain” (Anne Johnson Flint). There will be days when we’re "in regions dark and deep" (88:6).
There's is one thing we can do in the darkness: Like Israel's poet, we can reach out for God: "As for me, O LORD, I cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you" (88:13)—in which case, the darkness will have pushed us a little closer to our Father and his faithful love and the darkness will have become, in that way, our dearest friend (88:18).
"Hello darkness, my old friend..."
David Roper
10.4.21
