by Brian Allred
In John Bunyan’s classic allegory Pilgrim’s Progress, the appropriately named main character, Christian, journeys through trials, troubles, and temptations on the way to eternal glory in the Celestial City. On one particular occasion, Christian, along with his traveling companion Hopeful, encounters Giant Despair. This giant locks them in a dark dungeon in his castle where he deprives them of food and water, beats them without mercy, and then advises them to put an end to themselves since they will likely never come out of that place. During a brief moment as the giant withdraws, Christian says to Hopeful, “What shall we do? The life we’re now living is miserable. As for me, I don’t know whether it’s best to live like this or to die quickly … The grave seems more easy for me than this dungeon! Shall we be ruled by the Giant?” [1].
We might wonder why Bunyan includes an episode like this. Let me suggest that it’s because Christians traveling toward heaven are not immune to falling captive to feelings of despair in this life and saying: “What shall we do? The life we’re now living is miserable!” Maybe you’ve spoken similar words before. Or maybe someone close to you has. Maybe you’re speaking them now as you find yourself in the darkness of the dungeon of Giant Despair, and you wonder with Christian: “Shall we be ruled by the Giant?”
There are those who maintain that such experiences of darkness or despair are incompatible with the Christian life. Well, not according to Bunyan. More importantly, not according to the Bible. As an example, consider Psalm 88.
The psalms are given to help us express not only our praises but also the sorrow and despair we experience in this world. And through the pen of Heman the Ezrahite, God teaches us how we can respond to the dark at the end of the tunnel.
Psalm 88, like many other psalms, is a psalm of lament [2]. But Psalm 88 is unique. Other lament psalms have an arc along which they descend into the darkness then eventually swing back up with expressions of confidence in God’s goodness, joy in his presence, and gratitude for his deliverance [3]. But not Psalm 88. Bruce Waltke describes Psalm 88 as “‘the black sheep’ of the psalter, with no praise offered, and it stands out as the exception” [4]. Rather than walking us through the shadows and into the light, Psalm 88 leaves us with the dark at the end of end of tunnel. You can feel around for a light switch but the psalm’s walls are smooth. You can frantically thrust your hands into the psalm’s pockets for a match but the pockets are empty. You can look for the slightest beam of light to break in with some assurance but there are no windows. It seems without hope. The psalm literally ends with darkness: “my companions have become darkness” [5].
read Psalm 88
Psalm 88
A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.
[1] 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. (ESV)
The anguish is so unrelenting and raw we might wonder if something like this should even be in the Bible. What are we supposed to get from it? Well, the psalms are given to help us express not only our praises but also the sorrow and despair we experience in this world. And through the pen of Heman the Ezrahite [6], God teaches us how we can respond to the dark at the end of the tunnel.
Express Your Pain
The first thing Psalm 88 teaches is to express your pain. Much of this psalm consists of the psalmist describing and giving honest expression to his suffering: “my soul is full of troubles” [v. 3]; he feels weak with no energy or motivation: “I am a man who has no strength” [v. 4]; he feels dead inside: “like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave” [v. 5]; he feels invisible or forgotten: “like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand” [v. 5]; he feels overwhelmed like he’s constantly in danger of drowning: “you overwhelm me with all your waves” [v. 7, see also v. 17]; he feels socially isolated as if his friends have rejected or deserted him out of disgust: “You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a horrorto them” [v. 8, see also v. 18]; he feels abandoned like even God has turned his back on him: “O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?” [v. 14]; he feels trapped and helpless: “I am shut in so that I cannot escape” [v. 8, see also v. 15]; he cannot shake his sadness: “my eye grows dim through sorrow” [v. 9].
Can you relate to any of this? Do you ever feel like life just moves from one problem to the next, one disappointment to the next, one hardship to the next, so your soul is full of troubles? Do you feel overwhelmed like you’re drowning with the demands of work or with your kids, and while you don’t know how you can keep it up, there’s no escape? You’re tired and have lost motivation. Maybe you feel lonely and isolated. Even though you’re around lots of people, you don’t have one real friend with whom you can be vulnerable—and God doesn’t seem to care, either. Maybe you’re suffocating in a rotten marriage and desperately want out, but you know it might cost you your kids or your ministry to leave. Perhaps you’re under the authority of harsh or abusive parents but know you can’t provide for yourself, so you feel trapped in a miserable existence. Maybe you’re dreading every coming hour of every coming day—you feel dead inside and nothing makes you excited. You don’t feel like laughing, you don’t feel like eating, and you can’t sleep. You feel hopeless. There’s only dark at the end of the tunnel [7].
“Every life has dark tracks and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas.”
– Alexander MacLaren
As if this wasn’t enough, you can be made to think something’s wrong with you or with your faith because you feel this way. I mean, it’s not Christian, right? What kind of faith is being expressed in Psalm 88? Well, how about this: an honest faith—one that candidly gives voice to the depths of pain, brokenness, sadness, and despair we sometimes feel in a fallen world. Alexander MacLaren rightly admits: “Every life has dark tracks and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas” [8].
Whatever people might think, the Bible doesn’t paint an idealized, sterilized picture of life. It’s written to people who grapple with a planet filled with chronic sickness, dying children, natural disasters, losing jobs, crumbling marriages, divorce, addictions, betrayal, loneliness, the trauma of war, the wounds of abuse, and Alzheimer’s disease. Oh, and sometimes Giant Despair and the dark at the end of the tunnel. Life can sometimes feel harsh, cruel, unpromising, and cold. The Bible is realistic and honest about that, and we can be honest about that, too.
Counselor and psychologist, Edward T. Welch, says “It’s a myth that faith is always smiling” [9]. I would add that sometimes faith laments. So in moments of despondency or anguish, don’t automatically conclude that something is wrong with you. Charles Spurgeon, who battled frequent depression said: “No sin is necessarily connected with sorrow of heart, for Jesus Christ our Lord once said, ‘My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.’ There was no sin in him, and consequently none in his deep depression” [10]. The Bible doesn’t demand that we deny our feeling of hopelessness, disappointment, disillusionment, or deep sadness. As Paul Tripp observes: “Biblical faith never, ever requires you to deny harsh and dark realities. Biblical faith never asks you to minimize your suffering. Biblical faith never makes you put a happy smile on your face and act as if things are okay when they’re not okay at all” [11].
Psalm 88 invites you to express your pain; to do so isn’t a sign of unbelief. Sometimes Psalm 88 belongs on our lips in this world. But while faith isn’t always smiling, true faith is always fixed on God.
Establish Your Gaze
The second thing Psalm 88 teaches is to establish your gaze on God. The psalmist isn’t just expressing his pain: he is expressing his pain to God. Throughout the psalm, his gaze is toward God even if the darkness threatens to hide him or obscure the light of his face. He begins in vv. 1-2: “I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry!” Sometimes all we can do in the darkness of the pit is cry out to God—and that’s an expression of faith that he’s there and he hears. In the face of the dark at the end of the tunnel, you can either turn away from God in unbelief or toward him in faith. Psalm 88 teaches you to turn toward him and establish your gaze on him.
He already knows everything you’re going through. He doesn’t need you to inform him – he wants you to turn toward him in faith and worship. He’s not repulsed when you come to him singing the blues.
Even more, it teaches us to sing to him in our darkness. While the psalms are to be read as Holy Scripture, as prayers, and as poems, don’t forget that the psalms are songs—and God welcomes not only our songs of joy and praise but our sad songs of sorrow and lament as well.
Consider also that this psalm is found in a collection of psalms of the sons of Korah [12] who served at the temple: the place of worship [13]. So while this kind of honest lament may not form the only part of our worship before God, it can sometimes be a part of it. If you’re wondering whether God welcomes you in worship when you’re struggling with life and struggling to take joy in him and wrestling to delight in the ordering of his providence, read Psalm 88. Your pain, your misery, your despair, your sadness, your disappointment don’t disqualify you. After all, he already knows everything you’re going through. He doesn’t need you to inform him—he wants you to turn toward him in faith and worship. He’s not repulsed when you come to him singing the blues.
Another thing we should notice: Heman the Ezrahite establishes his gaze on God because he recognizes that ultimately God is the one who has placed him in the pit. We see this in vv. 6-8: “You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a horror to them.” In the end, he’s not blaming blind fate or even Satan for his condition. Rather, he acknowledges the sovereign hand of God even over his darkness. God is sovereign over ours, too.
But why would God permit such misery and pain or bring us to the dark dungeon where Giant Despair could assault us? Well, I won’t pretend I know the answer to that question. But it may be that God sometimes removes the light and our joy—for a season [14]—to teach us that nothing and no one accounts for our ultimate comfort in life but him: not his blessings, but him. God may sometimes strip you of the idols in which you trust and deprive you of the blessings you mistake as your light in order to take your gaze off of them and establish your gaze on him alone [15]. C. S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed: “[God] always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down” [16]. God wants us to learn—and sometimes this requires the darkness—that he is enough; that, in the words of John Calvin, “He alone will be for us in place of all things, since all good things are contained in him” [17]. In others words, the dark at the end of the tunnel provides you as a child of God with an opportunity to cry out to God in faith as your all-sufficient source of light. And it beckons you to embrace him as your ultimate source of hope.
Embrace Your Hope
Given everything we read in Psalm 88, perhaps its most surprising feature is how it begins. The psalmist embraces his hope at the very outset by praying in v. 1: “O LORD, God of my salvation.” That’s not only an expression of faith that God is there and that he hears, but also that he’s the hope of our rescue and deliverance [18]. Waltke comments, “despite unrelenting affliction and unanswered prayer, Heman, the author, does not lose hope in the God of Israel…against all the contrary evidence to God’s goodness, the Lord is his God and remains his hope…His hope and prayer are as insistent as his afflictions” [19].
Our hope can be as unshakable as Heman’s because the Lord has promised never to leave us or forsake us [20]—that means not in the pit, not in depths, not in the darkness. He might place us there, but he doesn’t forsake us there. Embrace your hope by clinging to these divine promises [21].
His promise finds ultimate fulfillment in the Messiah. Our supreme assurance of God’s commitment and care for us—even if we’re in the darkness—is found in Jesus. It is a blessed and comforting truth that in Jesus we have one who can sympathize with us in our despair [22]. Jesus knows the pain of loss, betrayal, injustice, trauma, sorrow, and loneliness. He knows the anguish of the soul being “very sorrowful, even unto death” [23]. He knows what your darkness is like because he’s been there, too. The light went out for him for three hours as he hung on the cross [24]. And in that darkness, he expressed his pain and established his gaze on God in faith crying out: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” [25].
But in reciting these words from Psalm 22 (or did he sing them?), we learn that in Jesus we have someone who does more than relate to our darkness: we have someone who brings salvation from that darkness. “What Golgotha secured for us was not sympathy but immunity” [26]—immunity from being forsaken when the lights go out. Jesus didn’t simply feel forsaken on the cross—he was forsaken on the cross because he was bearing your sin and my sin. And because he was forsaken, we have the assurance that we are never forsaken—even in the darkness of the dungeon of Giant Despair. You are not alone, and there is redemption and deliverance from the darkness because Jesus is the light of hope, the God of your salvation.
Jesus didn’t simply feel forsaken on the cross – he was forsaken on the cross because he was bearing your sin and my sin. And because he was forsaken we have the assurance that we are never forsaken – even in the darkness of the dungeon of Giant Despair.
Notice how Jesus is the answer to the rhetorical questions we find at the very heart of the psalm in vv. 10-11: “Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you?Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon?” The answer is yes. In the death and resurrection of Jesus there shines the inextinguishable light of hope. Embrace your hope.
Conclusion
In this life, God’s children sometimes find themselves in darkness. And while God often dispels that darkness with beams of his light like in the other psalms of lament, Psalm 88 tells us that sometimes there only seems to be dark at the end of the tunnel. But the darkness doesn’t mean you aren’t God’s child. Read that again: the darkness doesn’t mean you aren’t God’s child. William Cowper, the eighteenth century hymn writer, often struggled with bouts of despair throughout his life, so much so that he was institutionalized at times. What has been said about him is also true of others: “It is possible to be a child of God, without consciousness of the blessing, and to have title to crown, and yet to feel immured in the depths of a dungeon” [27].
So if you find yourself in the dungeon of Giant Despair, what do you do? Express your pain. Cry out to God in your sorrow, your discouragement, your disappointment, your despair. Establish your gaze on God as you turn toward him in faith. And embrace your hope in the God of your salvation who promises that the dark at the end of the tunnel isn’t the last word. Psalm 88 might end in the dark but Psalm 88 isn’t the end of the Bible, or even the end the psalms [28]. Scripture assures us that in the end light will dispel all darkness [29], peace will drive out despair, and life will triumph over death through Jesus the Messiah, the Light of the world. The sun isn’t any less real when the darkness of night hides it—and it will rise with a new and everlasting day when Jesus returns.
Notes
[1] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress in Modern English (North Brunswick, NJ: Bridge-Logos Publishers, 1998), 150-152.
[2] Other psalms of lament include 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 22, 25, 26, 31, 35, 36, 38, 39, 42, 43, 55, 56, 57, 61, 63, 64, 69, 70, 102, 109, and more. According to Bruce Waltke, “About one-third of the Psalms or portions of psalms are given to [lament] … they remind us that pain is the frequent experience of God’s people.” See Bruce Waltke & Fred Zaspel, How to Read and Understand the Psalms (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 304-305.
[3] For lament psalms that feature such an arc, see Psalm 10 and Psalm 13.
[4] Bruce Waltke & Fred Zaspel, How to Read and Understand the Psalms, 234.
[5] The NIV translates the final phrase in Psalm 88 as “the darkness is my closest friend,” but the verse in Hebrew ends with the word darkness: מַחְשָׁךְ.
[6] 1 Kings 4:31 also mentions Heman the Ezrahite – along with his wisdom (though surpassed by Solomon’s).
[7] These kinds of feelings and experiences can be signs of clinical depression. While I’m not intending to address issues specifically related to clinical depression in this article, I recognize it as a legitimate, important, and widespread concern both inside and outside the church. For a resource that offers insights into understanding and treating clinical depression from a biblical perspective, see Edward T. Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness (Winston-Salem, NC: Punch Press, 2004).
[8] https://gracequotes.org/author-quote/alexander-maclaren/
[9] Edward T. Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness, 31.
[10] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/565247
[11] Paul David Tripp, Suffering (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2018), 108.
[12] Other psalms of the sons of Korah include Pss. 42-49, 84, 85, and 87.
[13] For the role of the sons of Korah in Israel’s worship, see 1 Chronicles 6:31-38; 9:17-19.
[14] I readily and sympathetically concede that from our perspective these can be very long seasons for some people.
[15] This is touched upon in the Westminster Confession of Faith’s excellent chapter Of Providence (5.5): “The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave, for a season, his own children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled; and, to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends (italics added).
[16] C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1961), 52.
[17] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (2 Volumes), ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 919.
[18] This is similarly expressed by Job in Job 13:15: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.”
[19] Bruce Waltke & Fred Zaspel, How to Read and Understand the Psalms, 234-235.
[20] Hebrews 13:5.
[21] Kara Dedert makes the important point that in Bunyan’s story, “Christian’s deliverance came not because the darkness ended but because he remembered to use the key of promise in his pocket.” See https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/how–can-i-deal-with-despair
[22] Hebrews 4:15.
[23] Matthew 26:38.
[24] Matthew 27:45.
[25] Matthew 27:46; cf. Psalm 22:1 (another psalm of lament).
[26] Donald MacLeod, The Person of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 178.
[27] Quoted in Edward T. Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness, 52.
[28] The book of Psalms ends with a burst of exuberant praise in Pss. 146-150. David Mitchell observes “… Psalms 146-150 are the grand coda of praise to the entire collection.” See David C. Mitchell, The Songs of Ascents: Psalms 120-134 in the Worship of Jerusalem’s Temples (Newton Mears, Scotland: Campbell, 2015), 215-216.
[29] In Revelation 22:5 – the last chapter of the Bible – we’re told: “And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”