The invitation asks what you can bring.
You know the answer people expect: the potatoes, the familiar cake, the dish whose recipe everyone asks for. You may want to bring it. You may want to sit with people you love and hear the house fill with conversation again.
But someone will not be there. Before you have answered the message, you are already wondering how to get through the meal without making everyone sad. There seems to be something else you are expected to bring: the version of yourself who used to enjoy this day.
A holiday can make absence public. The calendar returns to a date that once held a particular voice, errand, or greeting. Everyone else may be preparing for a celebration while you are also preparing to miss someone.
Psalm 88 is not a prayer about a holiday. It speaks from a danger far more severe than the strain of a gathering. The speaker feels close to death, confined, and separated from friends. We are not told enough to reconstruct the circumstances. Yet this prayer has something to give a reader who cannot find a cheerful ending for the day ahead.
It begins:
LORD, the God of my salvation,
I have cried day and night before you.
Let my prayer enter into your presence.
Turn your ear to my cry.Psalm 88:1-2, WEB
The opening names God as the one who saves. It does not report that rescue has arrived. The person praying asks to be heard, then describes a life that feels almost lost.
These are hard words to hear in a room accustomed to praise. They are also words preserved in Israel's prayer book. The heading names singers and a musical direction. This intensely lonely voice has a place in the prayers of a people; it has not been kept outside until it sounds more hopeful.
The speaker does not keep the complaint at a polite distance from God. Throughout the psalm, the accusations are direct: you have laid me in the pit; you have taken my friends away. The prayer asks why God hides his face. We should not turn that cry into an explanation of someone else's loss. It does not give us knowledge that God caused a death as punishment or arranged an absence to teach a lesson.
It gives us a sufferer's words addressed to God when even God seems far away.
Later, the speaker returns to the appeal:
But to you, LORD, I have cried.
In the morning, my prayer comes before you.
LORD, why do you reject my soul?
Why do you hide your face from me?Psalm 88:13-14, WEB
Morning has come, but the questions remain. The psalm does not tell us that repeated prayer has changed how the speaker feels. Its last verse says:
You have put lover and friend far from me,
and my friends into darkness.Psalm 88:18, WEB
There is no final stanza in which everything becomes clear. No report that friends have returned. No promise from the speaker to feel differently by evening.
And still, this prayer belongs in Scripture.
Christian hope does not require us to add the ending the psalm does not give. We may believe in resurrection and still be unable to sing at the gathering. We may hear a song we love and find that this year it brings tears. The words of hope can remain true while our own words are few.
You do not have to make a holiday prove that you are doing better.
There may be moments you enjoy. Enjoying the meal does not make the person less missed. There may be a tradition you cannot bear to repeat this year. Changing it does not settle what you must do next year. Grief need not become a performance of either sadness or cheerfulness.
Other people's joy can be genuine. So can your sorrow. Neither needs to be used against the other. A gathering can make room for someone who laughs at one story and grows quiet at the next. If you are spending the day alone, your quiet prayer belongs no less than the songs being sung elsewhere.
Psalm 88 does not tell us how this day will go. It leaves a place for what remains unanswered when the dishes are put away.
Let One Expectation Change
If a holiday is approaching, consider one expectation you have been carrying. It might be making a dish, staying for the whole gathering, or repeating a tradition exactly as before.
You may keep it, change it, or leave it aside this time. Choose only where you have a real choice; necessary care and other people's decisions may limit what can change.
If there is someone who can receive the preference kindly, you could tell that person: I would like to come, but I will leave after the meal. Use words that fit your actual choice. You need not explain the whole grief. If no receptive person is available, you may simply consider what is possible without making an announcement.
This will not remove the absence or guarantee an easy day. It is one way to take part without promising a feeling you cannot supply.
Prayer
LORD, turn your ear to my cry. You know whom I miss and what this day used to hold. Receive the prayer I cannot finish with praise. Give me wisdom for what I can take part in and what I need to leave aside. Make room among your people for tears as well as songs. Hear me when the gathering is over and the house is quiet again. Amen.
Reflect
What part of the coming holiday have you felt you must perform as though nothing has changed?
Continue
Related: The Empty Chair and the God Who Stays
Related: Lament Is Still Faith
Related: How to Support a Grieving Friend Without Cliches
Next: Carrying Love After Goodbye
Scripture: Psalm 88, World English Bible.
Written by: Ruth Caldwell
Scope: This devotional offers Christian spiritual support and education. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, therapy, or crisis services.