Psalm 88.
—By Heman, son of Korah, of the tribe of Levi, servant to King David.
Oh, God who saves! I’ve been crying to you day and night! Listen to me! My soul is filled with trouble. I can feel my life slipping toward the grave. I’m as good as dead. Might as well call the coroner. It’s over for me. I’m weak and broken all over. God, do you really want me to die? Is it my time already? Because you’ve abandoned me to death. What are you doing to me? Look at me, look at my health: are you trying to destroy me?
And now you’ve even taken my friends away from me. I am cut off from everyone. They all hate me. My eyes are red with weeping. I’ve called on you. I’ve stretched my hands out to you. Save me, God! I can’t praise you from the grave, can I? But I can praise you here! If only you’ll save me. God, I come to you. I keep coming to you, every day, every morning! Why do you cast me away? Why do you hide your face from me? I’m afflicted. I’m suffering. I have anxiety and fear and worry and dread. And my prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling. Meanwhile, my enemies surround me like deep waters. I am drowning in their lies and betrayal. And my friends are nowhere to be found.
Desperately, I remain alone.
I am alone. Psalm 88:1-18.
We do not know the details of Heman’s suffering, but he was in the middle of something terrible. A note in my study Bible points out that this is one of the few psalms “that gives no answer or expression of hope”[1]
It is entirely negative. Psalm 88 is a LAMENT, a complaint to God without one note of hope or faith. Is that allowed? Shouldn’t Heman have added something positive at the end of his song of lament?
I know that for me, even while writing the most bitter journal entry or written prayer, I cannot finish without restating my own faith and re-affirming my hope in God.
Why does Heman just leave it there: “Desperately, I remain alone.” What a sad ending to a chapter in the Bible. Heman should have at least added a few praise Gods, right?
No. Heman is being honest. He does not feel it. He is being HONEST with God. He is being real. Telling it like it is. His feelings are ugly and raw, so his prayer is ugly and raw.
And you know what? God can take it.
God would rather we speak to him honestly than add religious-sounding words that do not come from the heart.
God described David as a man with a heart like God’s. And David was honest with God, no matter the situation. David’s psalms bear witness to his intimate and vulnerable relationship with God. This warrior of a man was able to strip off all his defenses, all his walls, and talk to God honestly. And David seems to have taught that to the singers and songwriters who worked for him. Heman, as a son of Korah, learned that lesson well. In Psalm 88, Heman shows us how to talk to God:
Talk to God HONESTLY. Be vulnerable. Share your emotions. Weep if you feel it. Be angry at God if you feel it. But come to God honestly. Bring him your true heart and all the emotions you find inside it. Wrap your heart up like a messy, emotional gift, and hand it over to God in the most honest way you can.
That is how we relate to God. That is how you build a relationship with the sovereign creator of the entire universe: hand him your heart.
AΩ
[1] Chronological Life Application Study Bible, King James Version, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, 1988, p581 n.Ps 88:1ff.
Household Words: 