A meditation on Psalm 55
The psalmist has painted a chilling picture of the soul’s darkness: “My heart quakes within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me". (Psalm 55:5) All of us know winter’s darkness; many of know the soul’s darkness; most of us acknowledge the current world’s darkness.
Advent takes us into the darkness. With light. Not much light, but enough to overtake the darkness. The light is hope and mercy and peace. That light has been given to each of us. Sometimes it is hard to find, because our own darkness, not to mention the darkness of the world – moral emptiness, threats of war, religious and racial oppression, sexual harassment, mass gun shootings – seems to envelop everything.
Through faith, the psalmist found the God of hope: “In the evening, in the morning, and at noonday, I will complain and lament, and he will hear my voice”. (verse 18)
It is an audacious promise that God will meet us in our darkness. It is a wild and faith-driven risk that we trust that divine presence who, in the mystery of silence, “will hear my voice”.
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