Imagine God providing a psalm for His people to sing when there isn’t even one ray of light!
We’ll have to keep our chins up for Psalm 88! We can tell the mood of the psalm when the selected tune is “Mahalath Leannoth.” As best we can tell, it means something like “Sickness and Depression” or “Affliction and Wormwood.” You get the idea. The psalmist is singing the “Blues.” He sure hopes God is listening (Ps 88:12) when he describes his worst case scenario. Any one of the 18 disasters (vv 3-9) would be devastating. His daily prayers seem useless (vv 9-10). Yet he continues to cry out to God. What’s the purpose of this psalm? It’s found in verse 1. “O Lord, God of my salvation, I have cried out day and night before You.” When facing such hard times, there’s nowhere else to go but to the Father’s arms. Recall Peter’s question, “To whom shall we go?” ( Jn 6:68). There’s nowhere else. The first verse is the only bright spot in the chapter. That in itself is a kind of comfort, isn’t it? When you feel the bottom fall out of life, you aren’t the first one who has experienced that. In fact, to add a ray of hope to this mournful plea, listen: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Cor 10:13). Here is God’s five-finger grip. 1. Others have survived this before. 2. The faithful God will see you through. 3. He won’t let your trouble go beyond your limit. 4. There’s always an Exit for you to escape. 5. When you go through it, you find you can bear it because He bears you! Believe it or not, this psalm is called “A Song.” If the psalmist could sing with things this bad, let’s praise the Lord ANYWAY. This is the “sacrifice of praise” (Heb 13:15).