Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 203 · July 22
Into Darkness
“Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.”
Perhaps someone has told you, "God never gives you more than you can handle." They meant it kindly. The man who prays Psalm 88 would not have known what to do with that sentence.
He is not speaking from outside the faith. His first line speaks straight to God: "O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee." And he does not describe his trouble as an accident: "Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps." "Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me." Each time he says plainly that God is the one who has done it, and he says it to God.
The middle of the psalm is a string of questions, and none of them is answered: "Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee?" "Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" Then he says how long this has gone on: "I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up." He has lived with this since he was young, and it is the only life he has known.
Then comes today's verse, which is the last one in the psalm: "Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness." In Hebrew the very last word of the psalm is "darkness," and nothing follows it. Most psalms of lament turn toward praise before they end, and this one does not. Nothing has gone missing from your Bible; that is simply where it stops. It was prayed in the dark, and it was handed to "the chief Musician" to be sung in the dark, because someone in the congregation would need it.
If someone hands you a neat paragraph that explains it all away, you do not have to take it. If you are in the dark, this psalm is yours, all of it. Read the last verse once more, aloud if you can. Then look back at the first line, because the man who ends in darkness began by calling God "O LORD God of my salvation." In the middle he says, "in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee," meaning his prayer would reach God first each day. He never stopped talking to God, and God kept his prayer in the Bible for you. You can stay where this psalm leaves you and still keep speaking to the God of your salvation.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 203 is Feet Like Hinds (Habakkuk 3:19).