Ps. 88 This psalm is the most depressed of all the laments in the Psalter. The writer’s distress can be heard from beginning to end, because his pain has lasted from his youth (v. 15) until the present. Most laments turn to confidence and praise at the end, but in this one the only glimmer of hope is that the psalmist is concerned to pray at all. He refers to God as “my salvation” (v. 1). A Christian is not, as such, free from the suffering of this world. Contrariwise, the Christian lot commonly is suffering and pain. We cannot hope to escape all suffering, but we find solace in the suffering and resurrection of Christ (Phil. 3:10).