We will be spending the next few weeks in the Psalms, the songs of God in Scripture. When I was thinking of all of the possible 150 Psalms to choose from to start our series, I chose Psalm 88 because it is potentially the saddest and most depressing Psalm of the entire book. But it is a great way to start the series, because as Elton John sang “sad psalms say so much.” If we look at the shape and contour of what we hope our life will be, what a successful and good life might look like, our expectation is that aside from a few dips and turns things will mostly be moving upwards. Growing happiness, growing wealth, increasing influence, greater satisfaction. At the same time, for those who are followers of Jesus our deepest hope is that our lives, our homes and our churches look more and more like Jesus because He is the thing of utmost value in the universe. So here is the conflict in our life: if our lives, our homes and our churches are moving in the direction that the world and our expectations say they should, always up and never down, then how will our lives, our homes and our churches ever hope to reflect the life of Jesus when the life of Jesus was a constant movement downward to the cross and into the grave before moving upward to glory? If we want to see our lives and our homes and our churches to bear fruit, Jesus says those things must first die and be buried.
