I’ve been reading one psalm a day while working on my poetry book project, From Lament to Praise, and today was Psalm 88, and I cheated and read Psalm 89 as well, lol (I’ll explain why later). What I love about the Psalms is that they speak to the common human experience and they give us permission to lament—to complain to God in our suffering. As you’re reading the Psalms, they won’t always immediately relate to what you’re currently experiencing. Their application changes with the seasons of your life. So, for the past almost 3 months, there’ve been a handful of psalms I’ve felt have immediately related to my current experience with depression, such as Psalms 4, 10, and 13, but none of them have hit me as hard as Psalm 88 did today. As a pastor, I’ve taught parishioners how to meditate on the Psalms in several Bible studies, and one of the things I teach them is to pay attention to what emotions the psalm evokes. So, I’ll break it down verse by verse and what I was experiencing as I meditated on the psalm.
vv. 1-2, O LORD, God of my salvation, I have cried out day and night before You. Let my prayer come before You; incline Your ear to my cry. Sometimes I forget, but I pray every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed. I’ve memorized Luther’s morning and evening prayers in the Small Catechism, which are respectively (beginning each with “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”):
I thank You, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, that You have kept me this night from all harm and danger; and I pray that You would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, that all my doings and life may please You. For into Your hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen.
And
I thank You, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, that You have graciously kept me this day; and I pray that You would forgive me all my sins where I have done wrong, and graciously keep me this night. For into Your hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen.
Every night, right before “and graciously keep me this night,” I also include petitions that are either on my heart or ones people have requested of me. A practice I’ve formulated in my profession is keeping a little notebook in the breastplate of my clerical shirt to write people’s names and requests when they spontaneously ask me to pray for them that way I don’t forget and they know I’m taking their request seriously. I keep up with them as well so that when the prayer is answered, I cross off the request.
I first began praying these prayers earlier this year when I was suffering with insomnia, which started around the time of my official (forced) resignation in January. My problem wasn’t staying asleep; it was falling asleep. I’d lie awake at night, all my anxieties laid out before me, twisting and turning in the bed like a rotisserie chicken. There were some days I couldn’t sleep for 24-36 hours, sometimes longer. Until, around June or July, a friend and colleague encouraged me with Psalm 127, “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows; for so He gives His beloved sleep” (v. 2).
As I pondered this psalm, I “happened” to find myself reading Psalm 4, and the following verses stuck out to me, “Hear me when I call, O God of righteousness! You have relieved me in my distress; have mercy on me, and hear my prayer… Be angry, and do not sin. Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still… I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” (vv. 1, 4, 8). These psalms helped me realize what was utterly lacking in my life: prayer.
At first, I experienced shame because what kind of pastor doesn’t pray every day? Then I quickly realized I’m only human. So, that day I memorized Luther’s morning and evening prayers, prayed the evening prayer that night, and I do not exaggerate when I say that for the first time in 6 months, I was able to fall asleep without any issues. The prayer is not a magical incantation; that’s not what I’m driving at. The key is: I trusted in the Lord.
What does this have to do with Psalm 88:1-2? Welcome to autistic monotropism! Monotropism has to do with attention, which is a finite resource, and we all use that finite resource differently. Polytropic thinkers (neurotypicals) tend to think more like a lantern, where their attention can go in multiple directions but only so far. Monotropic thinkers, on the other hand, tend to think more like a flashlight where our attention goes only in one direction and it goes very far and deep. This is my monotropic way of saying: I’m getting to the point; I have a long vision for what I want to say. My point is that I’ve been crying out to God day and night in these prayers, beseeching Him to incline His ear toward me and my situation. As soon as I read these first two verses of the psalm, immediately I thought, “This is me.”
vv. 3-6, For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to the grave. I am counted with those who go down to the pit; I am like a man who has no strength, adrift among the dead… whom You remember no more, and who are cut off from Your hand. You have laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the depths. If ever there has been an adequate description of depression in the Scriptures (aside from Job’s masterful poetry), this is it. It is difficult to express depression to those who’ve never experienced it and therefore don’t understand it. Many think it’s just a pervasive sadness, and therefore something you can just “get over.” But it’s a lot more than that. This is why I love to read genres like horror and fantasy because they illustrate the profundity of certain human experiences, so I’m going to employ horror as my explanation.
Imagine there’s an invisible entity that exists both outside and within you. It has no physical manifestation—no face, no body, no limbs, no cells. It’s more than invisible; it’s an enigmatic fiend that cannot be perceived with the human senses, yet still it can be felt. Impossible? Yes, and that is precisely why depression is so difficult to comprehend and battle. The entity exists both outside yourself and within you, and it lives off your soul like a parasite. In order to survive, it feeds off your will to live—your vitality. It is a constant physical and mental enervation; it is a symbiotic relationship between the two. If your body is fatigued, so is your mind, and vice versa. There might be a few hours—even a full day—where you suddenly feel revitalized, only for it to be quickly and abruptly sucked away, as if the entity was full only for a little while before continuing to feed off you.
That’s depression. It’s scary, isn’t it? And here’s another paradox: you feel constantly empty, yet in the psalmist’s words your soul is also “full of troubles.” You feel like death is your true companion. You desire it, whether this is suicidal ideation or what I describe as second hand suicide. Of all places, I first heard this term on a TikTok video. Maybe there’s an actual psychological term for the phenomenon, but he described it as the desire to just stop being alive. It’s being too afraid to do the act yourself, and not wanting to burden the people you love beca use of the perceived selfishness of the act, so you just wish and hope that an outside force will do it for you, like a car accident or something else so that there’s something to explain your death. This is exactly what I was experiencing last year, and lately the feeling will periodically rear its ugly head, thought not as extreme as it was last year. This phenomenon is what led to my forced resignation.
Darkness is also your companion. You can no longer find joy in the things you used to love. For me, it’s been relationships, video games, reading, and other things. More recently, however, reading has been a healthy escape from the darkness.
vv. 7-8, Your wrath lies heavy upon me… You have put away my acquaintances far from me; You have made me an abomination to them… My depression and forced resignation are not my fault, but sometimes it feels like they are. Sometimes it feels like God is punishing me, but I know this is not true. I wasn’t being punished for my autistic behavior at my former parish like I’ve thought for so long; rather, God was removing me from a toxic situation where His people there could not find the compassion and the love to support their pastor through his mental health crisis. Even so, I feel abandoned, but not by God. Both my wife and I feel this way. We feel abandoned and forgotten by the LCMS, left in Limbo—the first circle of Hell—as we wait, hopelessly twiddling our thumbs for a Call while our financial situation grows dire.
I feel abandoned by my friends and colleagues. No one but my parents check up on me. My district president calls me every few months, but I don’t feel he actually cares because he doesn’t offer any solutions to help. At the beginning of my resignation, I asked my circuit visitor to let the other pastors in the circuit know I’m available for pulpit supply, but I don’t think he actually told them because I didn’t receive any requests until I sent a circuit-wide email saying I’m available for pulpit supply. Within 24 hours I got booked for four dates. There’s a lesson there: take initiative; don’t depend on others to do things for you.
And to use the psalmist’s word, I feel like an “abomination.” It is a shame that we allow church politics to influence our decisions, and based on my conversations with more experienced pastors, I have no doubt that the public knowledge of my autism is a discriminatory decision some make not to extend a Call to me. It won’t be the official reason, of course, but the prejudice still occurs in the gears of the mind.
I don’t regret being so open about my autism. Some have cautioned me against it, but I refuse because hiding my autism would literally be hiding who I am, which leads to masking, and that is a whole other issue I’ve talked enough about already that only exacerbates anxiety and depression. People say, “Don’t make autism your entire personality,” or “Don’t let your autism define you,” but the autism is my entire personality; it does define me. Okay, yes, being a baptized child of God is my full identity, but that makes me a baptized autist, just as it makes me a baptized husband, son, friend, and so forth. Autism, in some ways, does define me because I am autistic. Everything I do and am is literally part of the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V.
v. 14, LORD, why do You cast off my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me? A question I ask often. Theologically, I know God has not abandoned me because that’s not how He treats His people. I’m sure even the psalmist knew that. Seldom does knowledge trump feeling, however. I know God is not hiding from me, but it still feels like He is. Now, politically, I consider myself conservative, and a mantra conservatives favor is, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” This is true, but it’s not entirely comforting, and it’s not meant to be. Facts don’t care about your feelings, but feelings do matter. Should feelings be the ultimate arbiter of truth? Of course not. On the other hand, should facts—or reason—be the ultimate arbiter of truth? This is also ridiculous. We’re human; we have both reason/knowledge and feelings. It is folly to pit the two against each other; rather, there should be a mutual reciprocity. And right now, for me, there is an imbalance.
My feelings need to line up with what I know to be true. I truly know God is with me, yet it’s also important to feel this is true. Now, my feeling does not make God’s presence a reality. God does that. For example, when I partake the Lord’s Supper, I know Christ’s body and blood are in the elements for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Whether I feel this is true doesn’t matter; Christ is there because He says He is. Feeling is not the arbiter of God’s truth, but it is nevertheless important because the aim of the Gospel, strictly speaking, is to comfort consciences, meaning the application of the Gospel is to deliver what you know about God to be true to be comforted by that truth, and comfort is a feeling. “Facts don’t care about your feelings” is a Law-focused answer; it exposes your shortcomings and failures. What we need—what I need—is the Gospel.
Psalm 89: Faith through the Darkness
So, how is the Gospel delivered? Psalm 89 gives us the answer. I have long taught that psalms of lament have a consistent threefold pattern: (1) a complaint to God, (2) the reason for the complaint, and (3) trust and/or praise in the Lord. Psalm 88 breaks this pattern; it lacks the third component of the pattern. Thus, it seems rather hopeless. However, there is an old Hebraic practice of coupling certain psalms together, such as Psalms 50 and 51 (51 being David’s response to God in 50). The same can be done here, with Psalm 89 being a continuing of Psalm 88, which can immediately be seen in verse 1.
It appears the psalmist breaks the pattern here as well beginning in verse 38, but note he does end the psalm with praising the Lord in verse 52, “Blessed be the LORD forevermore! Amen and amen.” The psalmist is still suffering; nevertheless, he will continue to bless the Lord, just as he began the psalm with singing of His mercies. So, let’s break some of this psalm down verse by verse as I experienced it:
vv. 1-2, 5, I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever; with my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations. For I have said, ‘Mercy shall be built up forever; Your faithfulness You shall establish in the very heavens.’ …And the heavens will praise Your wonders, O LORD; Your faithfulness also in the assembly of the saints.” The strict sense of the Gospel—the comforting of the conscience (delivering what we know about God for our comfort)—takes place in worship. In the Lutheran tradition, we call it the Divine Service, and we call it that because of who is doing the serving. God is doing the service, hence “divine.”
Worship has nothing to do with our preferences and what we bring to the table; it has everything to do with what God is doing and what He is bringing to the table, and specifically that is our Lord and Savior in the Sacrament of the Altar. Rather than the me-focused tripe of pop psychology and works-righteousness theology, the Gospel is entirely extra nos—outside of us. This strict sense of the Gospel can even occur within our own homes.
I experienced it today in the reading of Psalms 88 and 89. I already knew God is merciful and faithful, but I forgot. Rather than these, I felt God is aloof, hence the entire 88th psalm. But His Word reminded me of who He is—that the Gospel, not His wrath, is His modus operandi. His Word reminded me of this truth, and yes, I was comforted.
v. 11, The heavens are Yours, the Earth also is Yours; the world and all its fullness, You have founded them. The cosmos belong to God. The Earth belongs to God, and all its inhabitants. This includes me. Knowing that I belong to God is comforting because God takes care of His creation. No one can say it better than Jesus did,
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, wha you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ …But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
Matthew 6:25-31, 33-34
Contrary to the deism of our founding fathers, God is not a watchmaker who has wound up time and is letting history run its course without any involvement. Rather, God is a Gardener, which even Mary Magdalene knew (John 20:15). A gardener tends his garden with tender fingers. God is also a Shepherd, and a shepherd at times may tend his flock with a firm rod since sheep are stupid and don’t know their boundaries, but he also leads them to pastures and waters and restores them (Psalm 23:1-3). Simply hearing this and remembering what I already know is comforting.
vv. 14-15, Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; mercy and truth go before Your face. Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound! They walk, O LORD, in the light of Your countenance. God has wrath, but wrath is not the basis of His reign. Earthly kings establish their reign on conquering with the wrath of their armies. God, the King of the universe, establishes His reign on righteousness, justice, mercy, and truth. These are what we sing about in the Divine Service. Again, I do not exaggerate when I say that even when I attend the Divine Service in my most depressed state, I never leave the service burdened by my anxieties and depression because the pastor delivers the Gospel to me through God’s Means of Grace: the Word and Sacraments.
vv. 19, 32, Then You spoke in a vision to Your holy one, and said: ‘I have given help to one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen from the people… Then I will punish their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. God is speaking of Jesus Christ here. Christ is the mighty, exalted one. The punishment I deserve for my transgressions fell on Christ. “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Saint Peter later reiterates this, “[Christ] Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Jesus was flogged and crucified for you and me. Flesh and muscle were ripped from His body for you and me. Jesus was nailed to a tree for you and me.
Something I’ll never forget is an exercise I did once with the youth at my former parish that turned out to be a powerful moment for them. In the youth area at the church, I set up a cross someone made from some sort of cardboard-like material that gets used for VBS. I had some sticky notes and I gave one to each child and told them to write down their sins that haunt them the most and the things they might hate about themselves. After they did this, I told them to give their sticky notes to me (I didn’t read them), folded them up, and nailed them to the cross. I told them their sins and those things they hate about themselves were nailed with Jesus to the cross. Then He was laid in the tomb with those things for three days and three nights, and when He rose and left the tomb, the tomb was not empty because He left their sins and those things they hate about themselves in there. At this point, I took their sticky notes off the cross, tore them up into a bunch of tiny pieces, and threw them in the trash where they belong.
I remembered this for me. Christ did not abandon me on the cross. So, why would He abandon me now? He wouldn’t.
vv. 38, 46, 49, 52, But You have cast off and abhorred, You have been furious with Your anointed… How long, LORD? Will You hide Yourself forever? Will Your wrath burn like fire? …Lord, where are Your former lovingkindness, which You swore to David in Your truth? …Blessed be the LORD forevermore! Amen and amen.” These verses recapitulate Psalms 88:1-89:37, and they accurately portray the complexity of lament, suffering, and depression. They speak to the common human experience.
Often, I receive the comfort of the Gospel, only to sink right back into the darkness. That entity rears its ugly head and I am consumed by self-loathing and worthlessness, and again I feel the Lord is aloof. But then I return to the Lord and bless Him, i.e., worship Him, and He gives me His Gospel—my daily bread. As Martin Luther so poignantly put it, “We need to hear the Gospel every day because we forget it every day.”
The Lutheran Column 