Devotionals

A Faithful Response to Darkness

Lord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry. Psalm 88:1, 2

The author of Psalm 88 is a courageous person because he is so honest. He gives us a glimpse of exactly how we should behave in the darkness. A shallow person skimming along on the culture’s popular view of how to cope with suffering is unable to talk to God the way this person does. The psalmist has confidence in God to handle the depths of his agony and the strength of his emotions.

He shows us how to interact with God during the dark times. Right away in verse 1, he declares what he has always known, that God is the one who saves him. Instead of dwelling on his inadequate humanity to meet the challenges posed to him in suffering, he turns to God, the source of hope, as the one who will sustain him and help him endure.

Declaring the truth about who God is puts restraints on our sorrow. Remembering these truths helps us keep our perspective. Without God, we would fall into despair, and we would get swallowed up in the abyss of our own hopelessness. But with him, we have a place to lean and someone to share our pain with us when the road gets too hard.

When life and health and relationships and even our sense of God’s love for us falls apart, we must rely on the memories we have of who God is. And then we must follow the psalmist’s example. Cry out to God over and over again. Remind him of what he is really like. Tell him of the ways he has loved you and been faithful to you in the past.

Be as honest with him as you possibly can. Ask him why he rejects you. Ask him why he hides his face from you. Tell him about your suffering and about how you feel. God can take it. Because if you remember, he’s been there. In the form of Jesus, he has hung on a cross in pain and alone. Like the psalmist in verse 14, Jesus, too, asked, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God’s wrath swept over him too. On the day he was laid in the grave, Jesus lost his life, his friends, his neighbors, his sense of connection to God. He experienced the darkest of the dark for you.

With the words “darkness is my closest friend,” this psalm ends unresolved. The psalmist is just sitting here in the dark suffering. He knows who God is but he has given up looking for the light, expecting it to ever shine again.

As we sit here with the psalmist in this place, let’s turn to the New Testament and take a look at these words from Paul in Romans 8:17-18. “Now if we are children then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

2 Corinthians 4:17 says, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

I Peter 4:12-13 also carries the theme of glory. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.”

According to Christian theology, the ultimate purpose of life is to glorify God. This means that the first purpose for our suffering is the glory of God. When we follow the psalmist’s example of a faithful response to suffering, we are ultimately placing all of our trust in God with nothing held back. We can’t see him or feel him but we trust him. When we do this. We treat him as glorious, as infinitely beyond us in goodness and wisdom.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.