Derek Thomas

It's one of those psalms that you're glad that it's there.

It's like knowing that if the aeroplane at 30,000 feet is going to descend into the ocean, that your seat can be used as a flotation device.

I'm not sure how reassuring that is when you're heading to that sea at 500 or 600 miles an hour.

It's probably you're going home to be with Jesus' time.

Well, Psalm 88, darkness is my only friend.

And this is a very, very dark place.

You think you've seen it all in Pilgrim's Progress.

And you've been in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, which was a pretty dark place.

And you've been in Vanity Fair, which was a dark place.

And now you're coming to perhaps an even darker place, the dungeon of the Castle of Giant Despair.

Now we're told by Bunyan that they're in this dungeon from Wednesday morning until Saturday night.

And perhaps what he is alluding to is the last days of Jesus from the moment of his betrayal from Gethsemane and through his trial into the Friday and his death and his burial and Saturday and Saturday night.

And he's, of course, raised on the Sunday.

And perhaps there's an illusion here that this darkness is a darkness that our Savior has known and redeemed.

That's a wonderful thing for Christians who experience great darkness and experience depression for whatever reason, and they find themselves in Psalm 88.

They find themselves in a place where darkness is my only friend.

And Bunyan is sort of alluding here that Jesus has been here too.

He's known what it is to be without a friend and to be surrounded by darkness, that the sun eventually refuses to shine upon him on the cross.

Now, let's get back to the allegory.

Giant despair has a wife.