Psalm 30: The Abyss (My Homily)

Where has the starlight gone?
Dark is the day
How can I find my way home?

Home is an empty dream
Lost to the night
Father, I feel so alone

When will the dawning break
Oh endless night
Sleepless I dream of the day

When you were by my side
Guiding my path
Father, I can't find the way

You promised you'd be there
Whenever I needed you
Whenever I call your name
You're not anywhere

I'm trying to hold on
Just waiting to hear your voice
One word, just a word will do
To end this nightmare

Good evening.

Those words are the lyrics to the song Endless Night, from the Broadway stage production of The Lion King. If you get a chance to listen to the song sometime, I strongly recommend it - it's one of my all-time favorites. Between the music and the lyrics, you can really feel Simba's desperation and anxiety, and I am willing to bet it's a feeling that we have all been able to relate to at one time or another.

Psalm 30 refers to it as "the pit". Michael Warden, a Christian Coach and writer from Gateway Church in Austin, refers to it as "the abyss". The abyss can hit us in many different ways. Sometimes we find ourselves there because of financial crisis. Other times from the physical pain of illness or injury, or the emotional pain of the loss of loved ones. And still other times through fear for our own life. Our abysses, our endless nights, are all different, but they share some similarities as well. I'd like to share with you an excerpt from Mr. Warden's blog, The Sojourner, in which he talks about his friend, Gandalf, who is going through a particularly dark and painful time.


Gandalf asked me yesterday if I thought he was in the Abyss--one of the stages of the Hero's Journey. Also called the Supreme Ordeal, the Innermost Cave, the Belly of the Whale. It's a singularly awful place, as full of stench and bile and rotting flesh as any fish's belly you could imagine.

I told him yes. I do think he's in the Abyss stage of the Hero's Journey. As I told him this, a part of me thought I should be glad for him--I mean, he is a hero, after all, and he is on the journey every hero must take. But I'm not glad; I'm just angry. And sad.

The Abyss, the Supreme Ordeal, the Innermost Cave...Despite their dark overtones they all still sound so mythic and pure--a final test of valor that calls you forth to face the dragon and makes you look very noble indeed. I mean, what's not to admire about a hero facing down a dragon?

But the real Abyss, the real Supreme Ordeal, looks nothing like that. It's not noble; it's humiliation at its worst.

Life is beautiful, but it is not fair. Some people are unreasonably blessed--charmed, as it were, to live a life of ease and prosperity. On the other end, however, there are those who are unreasonably battered by life. And this is where the Abyss of the Hero's Journey shows its true colors. For the Supreme Ordeal that the hero must face comes not head on, but from the side. It hits him in unexpected places, in ways that are, first and foremost, utterly unfair. It breaks all the rules. Its intent, you quickly realize, is not to best you in your strength, but to demoralize and humiliate you in an area of unexpected weakness, and to do it in such an extreme way that you simply lose any strength or will to go on.

It is the quintessential low blow. It's not pretty. It's not valorous or noble. It's ugly and humiliating and gritty and very, very real.

Still want to be a hero?

Yes. I do. Despite all this, I do. And I know Gandalf does as well. Because, as awful as the Abyss is, or can be, one simple truth holds the hero to the path: The Abyss is not the end of the story.

It tries to make you believe it is. That's the goal of the Abyss, by the way: to make you believe you've reached the end of all hope. The last stop. The place of absolute, irreversible failure and loss. And there is a kind of death that you must indeed pass through in this stage, so it definitely feels like the end of the story...at least, the end of the story as you have known it. But the true hero knows that resurrection awaits on the other side. And so, even though he may die, his hope does not. He trusts that there is still more story to be told.


"The hero trusts that there is still more story to be told." What a beautiful thought.

Simba knew this, too, by the way. His song, Endless Night, ends thus:

I know that the night must end
And that the sun will rise

I know that the clouds must clear
And that the sun will shine

I know that the night must end
I know that the sun will rise
And I'll hear your voice deep inside

My favorite bible verse as a child was Psalm 30, verse 5. "For His anger is but for a moment. His favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning."

Sometimes it seems like the night is endless, like the dawn will never come. Sometimes the abyss seems to go on and on, with no end in sight, no light at the end of this dark, dark tunnel. But we know that this is not the end of the story. And we can take courage, strength and hope in the knowledge that God always - ALWAYS - has the last word.