A Prayer when Darkness is Your Closest Friend: Psalm 88-Supplication through the Scriptures
A Prayer when Darkness is Your Closest Friend Psalm 88 Psalm 88 is the portrait of a godly man crying to the Lord in great suffering—and seeing no light at the end of the tunnel. Ligon Duncan Psalm 88 is said to be the darkest of all Psalms. One-third of the Psalms are lament psalms. Their tone is one of sadness and searching, looking for God in the midst of their suffering. But typically the lament psalms show a progression of sorrow and questioning to confident trust by the end of the psalm (Psalm 13 for example). However, Psalm 88 does not follow that progression. Instead, according to Tim Keller, the very last word in this Psalm in Hebrew is ‘darkness.’ The psalmist ends without a hope that his situation will be improved or settled. He concludes the psalm saying, “Darkness is my closest friend” (Psalm 88:18 NIV). Ligon Duncan in his excellent booklet on Psalm 88 says, “Not everyone gets a happy ending in a fallen world—and that includes even godly believers.” But while t...