 to be easy in reading through the Psalms to avoid or skip over 88 because it is the most unrelentingly dark of all the Psalms. We've looked before at 44 which has at least some elements of hope even though at the moment everything seems to have gone wrong but in Psalm 88 we are just plunged right into darkness and because there are many people in the world today and because throughout history not least church history there have been many people who have been in exactly this position. It's absolutely vital that from time to time we allow ourselves prayerfully to go into this moment of real lament and complaint. Lament and complaint which like Psalm 44 doesn't have a resolution. Psalm 44 has at least a prayer rise up please help us come to our rescue. Psalm 88 doesn't even do that. It just says you have done this. Here I am and it was your doing and as I shall be saying in a minute the you there or the you're there is both the reason for complaint and the one element of hope throughout because Psalm 88 begins by addressing God as oh Yahweh God of my salvation that's the one thing which the psalmist can cling on to by his fingernails this is who you're supposed to be you are the saving God you are the rescuing God you are the God of the exodus you are God of my salvation I am the one who is part of your people who is trusting in you to save and I know that there are many who I've worked with pastorally who've had to live through Psalm 88 and sometimes when you're in Psalm 88 all you can do is cling on to the you oh Lord God of my salvation it is you you you see there is an alternative you could be an Epicurean ancient or modern you could say well stuff happens God is a long way away he doesn't care he doesn't intervene in this world so I just got to put up with it and then you pass from being an Epicurean maybe to being some kind of a stoic and saying I just have to tough it out and if I don't like it maybe the door is open as the old stoics used to say and you're free to leave in other words yes you can take your own life if you like but in the Jewish worldview and the Christian worldview there is a you about the whole thing it is about the God of life who strangely sometimes leads his people through Gethsemane through that dark night in the pit below Caiaphas's house and out onto the horrid little hill called Golgotha the next day that's the way that Jesus went and he ended up shouting out my God why did you abandon me sometimes God's people are called to go that route and it's their praying of the you prayer which somehow in ways that I don't understand but is hidden within the mystery of Jesus Christ himself somehow that prayer can resonate out not just for themselves but like Jesus own life and death and prayer through his life and death it resonates out into God's world so that all who are in darkness and in the shadow of death may be held within the ultimately rescuing love of God because the answer to verses 10 and 11 and 12 is yes do you work wonders for the dead yes God does that will the shades rise up to praise you yes they will is your steadfast love declared your faithfulness in the land of the grave are your wonders known in the darkness the answer is yes but it may not be possible to get there too quickly in fact sometimes as poor new in writing Romans sometimes we just have to stay there and have to say God of my salvation this is where I am and I don't think you're distant I don't think you're absent it's just that I don't get it right now I am suffering there seems to be no hope and all I can do is cling on and say you you you you God are in this somewhere please will you enable me to stay faithful to you so that as I cling to you now so you will eventually do whatever it takes so that as Paul said to make me rely on the God who raises the dead that is the Christian hope but it is a hope which we often have to cling on to from a place of utter darkness