A friend of mine has been finishing his Ph.D in Italy. In response to my request he has supplied the following reflection on Ps 88. This is by coincidence, the same Psalm which I referred to in my earlier post. But it doesn’t matter. It highlights just how well God uses the same Psalm in different contexts to speak into our lives to comfort or challenge us. He writes:
“In 1993/94, there had been a tragic series of murders of young women in the Frankston area. A friend of mine, a newly ordained priest at the time, became involved with the family of one of the young victims, a year 12 student at the local secondary school. He was asked to conduct the funeral and rang me asking me to help him because it was going to be a ‘big’ funeral in the school hall with lots of media attention. The funeral was certainly big, the circumstances tragic and the feeling overwhelmingly heart-wrenching for all those concerned. That Friday evening, I was due to go away for a weekend recollection with my seminary colleagues. Sitting alone in the chapel and reflecting on the tragedy of the moment, I opened my breviary to Compline and the words of Ps. 88 had a poignancy that has remained with me to this day:
Lord my God, I call for help by day;
I cry at night before you.
Let my prayer come into your presence.
O turn your ear to my cry.
For my soul is filled with evils;
My life is on the brink of the grave.
I am reckoned as one in the tomb;
I have reached the end of my strength.
Like one alone among the dead;
Like the slain lying in their graves;
Like those you remember no more
Cut off, as they are, from your hand.
You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
In places that are dark, in the depths.
Your anger weighs down upon me;
I am drowned beneath your waves.
You have taken away my friends
And made me hateful in their sight.
Imprisoned I cannot escape;
My eyes are sunken with grief.
I call to you Lord all the day long;
To you I stretch out my hands.
Will you work your wonders for the dead?
Will the shades stand and praise you?
Will your love be told in the grave
Or your faithfulness among the dead?
Will your wonders be known in the dark
Or your justice in the land of oblivion?
As for me Lord, I call to you for help;
In the morning my prayer comes before you.
Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face?
In the silence and darkness of the moment, that psalm seemed to express everything I was feeling. I thought of the victim of that horrific murder. I thought of her family and friends. I thought of her teachers and the school community that was feeling the heavy burden of grief. I remembered the words of a wise scripture scholar who told said that we are used to thinking that we Christians interpret the scriptures; in fact, it is scripture that interprets us, our moods, our feelings and the realities of our life be they joy or sorrow. In that moment, while my head was looking for some symbol of hope and resurrection, my heart was facing the very human reality of sin, pain, suffering and tragic death.
In the midst of these very human and ancient realties, the psalms call out to God in grief, in fear, in suffering but also in hope and consolation. These psalms at times call out to God for justice and for meaning when the inscrutable ways of God are not clear to us as we struggle in our pilgrimage of life and faith. And yet, if anything, the scriptures always teach us that God is close to his people, that he hears their cry, that he never abandons them to darkness and death. Our prayer comes into His presence. He turns his ear to our cry.”
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