Do you show your wonders to the dead?

Psalm 88:1-18 TNIV

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.

I am overwhelmed with troubles

and my life draws near to death.

I am counted among those who go down to the pit;

I am like one without strength.

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.

You have put me in the lowest pit,

in the darkest depths.

Your wrath lies heavily on me;

you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.

You have taken from me my closest friends

and have made me repulsive to them.

I am confined and cannot escape;

my eyes are dim with grief.

I call to you, Lord, every day;

I spread out my hands to you.

Do you show your wonders to the dead?

Do their spirits rise up and praise you?

Is your love declared in the grave,

your faithfulness in Destruction?

Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,

or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

But I cry to you for help, Lord;

in the morning my prayer comes before you.

Why, Lord, do you reject me

and hide your face from me?

From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;

I have borne your terrors and am in despair.

Your wrath has swept over me;

your terrors have destroyed me.

All day long they surround me like a flood;

they have completely engulfed me.

You have taken from me friend and neighbor—

darkness is my closest friend.


My thoughts -

The idea of an all knowing, all loving, all powerful God seems to be defeated in suffering. You can ask if God is all knowing then shouldn't God have seen this coming? If God is all loving why would God allow suffering to happen? If God is all powerful then can't God do something to stop it?

The psalmist here is overwhelmed by suffering. He is crying out to God in anguish and counting his life as not worth living, himself as essentially already among the dead. He has cried out to God to save him, he says that he cries out every day, and yet he has found no relief. There is no hope. He's as good as gone.

The psalmist feels forsaken. He feels abandoned by God. More than abandoned he feels oppressed by God. He is telling God that his suffering is God's doing. Absent an all knowing, all loving, all powerful God that suffering has defeated he has opted for an all powerful one that has taken love away. God has become the oppressor. He has cried out to God and has received no relief. Worse than that he has received wrath.

I want desperately for this psalm to have a happy ending but it doesn't. I want the psalmist to express hope and confidence in God's plan and purpose but he doesn't. Suffering is okay if you know it is for a short time and then God makes everything better. We even have hope in heaven. If it doesn't work out in this life we always have the next, and this time it will be perfect. You'll see.

This psalmist has no hope in the next life. But he does raise an interesting thought. I love the questions he asks beginning with verse 10:

Do you show your wonders to the dead?

Do their spirits rise up and praise you?

Is your love declared in the grave,

your faithfulness in Destruction?

Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,

or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

Death is darkness. Death is the abyss. Death is the unknown. Death is destruction. The psalmist is resigned to his fate. He is suffering. He will die. This offers him little hope. And yet he asks these questions. It feels so optimistic in the midst of despair. A morbid optimism, sure. But optimistic.

And of course that is our hope, isn't it? We believe that God's love is shown beyond the grave. We believe that Jesus died and destroyed the darkness once and for all. Death is not the final word. Death is not the last chapter. Death has been destroyed. Destruction, as the psalmist calls it here, has been destroyed.

It seems crazy when the psalmist speculates it. Almost a wild fantasy. Can love extend into and beyond the grave? Can the dead rise up and praise God? Can love be found even in the darkness?

The psalmist can find no love even in this life. He's endured more than he can bear. He can't take it any more. He has no hope.

And yet still he does. A wild, crazy, almost irresponsibly optimistic hope that somehow God's love may be found even in the darkness, even in death.

And of course we share this hope. We call him Jesus.

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