‘When I see God, I’m going to have a word with him,’ said a patient who had suffered greatly for many years. I said to him, ‘You may have to join a long queue!’ 
Psalms like this one show us that it is acceptable to tell God how we feel. There are psalms which are joyful throughout and ones which begin with a complaint against God and end on a note of praise, but here the psalmist seems to be surrounded by darkness from beginning to end (vs 1,18). 

However, this is not a cry of despair. The psalm addresses ‘the God who saves me’ (v 1). The psalmist trusts God enough to pray every day (vs 9,13). Although, as a hospital chaplain, I cannot tell people why God allows them to suffer, they often appreciate honest prayer to help them trust God in the midst of it all.

The words in the Prepare section come from the hymn ‘God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform’. The author, William Cowper, suffered from severe bouts of depression but trusted that, somehow, God was at work.

Pour out your feelings to God, just as you are. Don’t try to make them ‘religious’ or ‘Christian’ or ‘respectable’.

I am writing this on what has been called ‘Blue Monday’, the third Monday in January, a day with the bogus claim to being the most depressing day of the year. 
This is the one psalm in the psalter with not a single ray of hope. No vow of praise once things get better, no hope that they will get better, no affirmation of faith, no praise for who God is. Everything is dark. The author does not specify exactly what his troubles are, though verse 15 suggests that he is suffering from an incurable illness. He has been abandoned by his friends and feels abandoned by God. He feels condemned and confined.

Why is such a litany of hopelessness in our Bibles? Because feelings like this are part of human experience. The psalm validates those feelings and gives words to those who find themselves in despair. The very lack of hope in the psalm is just what we need in times like these. Well-meaning friends who come to cheer us up, bringing Bible verses and assurances that things aren’t really that bad may only make matters worse. There are times when all we need is to be heard. CS Lewis wrote A Grief Observed when his wife died. EM Blaiklock wrote Kathleen. Both testify that nothing that anyone said to them was any help at all. ‘There are tears of things’ wrote Virgil.¹ Sometimes we experience depression for no discernible reason at all.

The psalmist does the right thing. He pours out his soul before God. We can be grateful to him for writing it down. Jesus was ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’.² He understands. He has been there.

If this is you, rewrite this psalm filling in your own details. If this describes someone you know, think how you can best pray for them and help them.

¹ ‘Sunt lacrimae rerum’; Virgil, Aeneid, 1.462  ² Isa 53:3, AV