How are you? I hope you are doing well and enjoying at least in some way the wonderful days that we have had lately. One of my favourite things to do in these wonderful sunny winter days is to grab a quick bite to eat in my lunch break and take my dog, Dora, for a walk at the North Wall. She does some exercise, I enjoy the walk, the view and the music or message that I get to hear on those 30-40 minutes, and we both return home refreshed- she goes to sleep, and I usually have new ideas to explore.

There is something quite special about having new ideas, or new clarity about some issues in our lives, isn’t it? Sometimes we struggle to understand some seasons of life and we need the strength to persevere to get to the end of that season and into the new things that God has for us. I don’t think it would be any surprise to say that I am going through a hard season right now. It’s been just a month since one of the most stressful weeks of my life- I had dental surgery, my brother had a tumour removed from his eye and my father passed away in basically a period of 10 days. I am slowly returning to the spiritual dynamics that were part of a normal routine to me, but that for w while have been difficult to carry. This week I had a bit of a rollercoaster during one of those walks with Dora…

Something that I like to do at the beginning of the day is to find a passage of scripture, read it a few times and then try to think about it as I go through my day. Just the other day I got ready to go for a walk and decided to read a Psalm before walking the wall, but the Psalm in my list was Psalm 88. When I finished it, I didn’t want to walk any more. And I don’t mean just walking that day, I mean that I didn’t want to walk any more, any day, in any way! If you don’t understand what I am saying, maybe you need to stop right now and read the Psalm 88.

Did you do it? Did you read it? C’mon, go ahead, I’ll be waiting here.

Did you do it now? Oh, now you know what I am talking about! Psalm 88 is a hard passage of Scripture to read and enjoy, to process, to assimilate. But it isn’t hard to relate to.

¹ Lord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.
² May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.

³ I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death.
⁴ I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like one without strength.
⁵ I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.

Wow. What seems to start like a statement of faith quickly changes into a list of statements of despair! Overwhelmed, close to death, strengthless, forgotten, forsaken. And there’s more:

You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.
⁷ Your wrath lies heavily on me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
⁸ You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;⁹  my eyes are dim with grief.

I call to you, Lord, every day;  I spread out my hands to you.
¹⁰ Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
¹¹ Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction^[e]?
¹² Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

Do you feel the pain in the words of Psalm 88? Do you feel the confusion, the brokenness, the lostness that reaches to the soul? Hopeless is a word that kept coming to my mind. The circumstances seem to be so overwhelming that any sense of hope has vanished. But usually when the Psalms start in such a tone, sooner or later you find the “but” that starts a change in the narrative and that points out to God. So, let’s see how the Psalm finishes:

But I cry to you for help, Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you.
¹⁴ Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?

¹⁵ From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;  I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
¹⁶ Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.
¹⁷ All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.
¹⁸ You have taken from me friend and neighbour—darkness is my closest friend.

Darkness is my closest friend… seems like something I would say when I was a teenager going through another radical mood swing! “Hello, darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again…” sang Simon and Garfunkel in their song The Sound of Silence (1964), and I never thought that such a song could remind me of a passage of scripture in such a powerful way. That’s the end of the Psalm, there was no twist, to change, to revelation. It ends like that! I went to the walk with a nod in my throat and thousands of painful memories swirling around my mind. The sky turned grey, the wind at the wall as horrendous and Dora didn’t seem to be enjoying the experience either. We returned, she went to lay at my feet while I sat in front of my computer wondering how I could process it. Because those words seemed very real, very relatable. We feel like that at times, we understand those words because in some seasons those are the words we would say or sing if we were to be truly honest and vulnerable. But the songs we sing and the prayers we speak rarely have the same edge of the psalms, we rarely dare to open up in the same way- but we know the feelings and the doubts, and the pain and the confusion are real. We have been there, we could say “Amen!’ to the Psalm if we had the strength to say anything at all.

I was there, staring at the screen, when I felt a question coming to my heart. “Have you ever stopped watching a movie or reading a book because the beginning was bad, or difficult, or confusing?” I said no, I usually persevere in the hope that the movie or the book will get better. Sometimes it takes until the last chapter or the last few minutes for the story to develop and suddenly everything makes sense. So, in that quiet moment, this idea came to my mind: what does Psalm 89 say? And here is what I found:

“I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.
² I will declare that your love stands firm forever,  that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself.”

The Psalm is too long to quote it here, but I invite you again to pause and read your Bible, read the Psalm 89 and be taken by the praise and worship that once again raises beyond the circumstances of this life and declare the truths that hold eternity together: God is good, God is faithful, God is loving, and God is for us! Those truths are not present only when things go well, but they are a firm foundation for our life every single day of our lives. Because those words are true, I can continue living with a renewed sense of hops, grace and love even when things aren’t perfect, or even when they are far from perfect! His character determines my destiny, not the circumstances. Is the pain any less real? No, but I know God is with me through it and his grace is enough, his mercies are new, and his love is constant. He is the point of reference that keeps my life under perspective- and he insists in saying that I am loved, that I am cared for, that I am safe for eternity, that he is with me right here and now. And that is enough, that is all I need. So, the next time life gets hard or confusing or over complicated or simply weird, remember this: keep reading, the next line may bring the breakthrough that you need! I invite you to join me in the last words of Psalm 89, reading them out loud wherever you are right now:

Praise be to the Lord forever!
Amen and Amen.