"A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.
O Lord, God of my salvation;
I cry out day and night before you.
2 Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry!
3 For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
5 like one set loose among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
6 You have put me in the depths of the pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah
8 You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a horror to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9 my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call upon you, O Lord;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
13 But I, O Lord, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
18 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness."
Psalm 88
Another dark experience to which this Psalm's message must certainly apply is the bludgeoning of spirit that takes place in those times when pressures come upon us - in the experience of depression, for example, 'when all around our soul gives way', and the sense of God's presence seems so far off. Concerning this, Maclaren finely says, 'Faith is not to let present experience limit its conceptions - God is nonetheless the God of salvation and nonetheless to be believed to be so, though no consciousness of his saving power blesses the heart at the moment.' In the numbness, when all sense and feeling of God is absent, faith must hold on to the fact of God, the consciousness of the fact that God is there, when all our feelings and senses cry out that He is not. Truth of fact, not of experience - this is the criterion in such a situation, and it is this that keeps us, and will pull us through. This is what we see in the Psalm - all through, the Psalmist is speaking to God, though he is conscious of being forsaken; all through, He is the God of his salvation, and he is conscious of that fact, though not experiencing it, from beginning to end. The word 'trust' in Job 13:15, which we earlier quoted, has the force of 'trusting in the dark', but it literally has the meaning of 'waiting patiently for God'. This is what we must do, in such a sense of desolation, 'wait till the shadows flee', in the assurance that, sooner or later, 'His loving- kindness shall break through the midnight of the soul'.