The Rose Almost Black

"Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord." (Psalm 130:1)

When Samuel Hole listed the roses in his garden, he did not stop at the pretty ones. White and blush and pink, yes. Carmine and crimson and scarlet. And then, in the middle of the list, without apology, roses almost black. They were in the garden. He grew them on purpose. He put them in the book.

And so did God. There is a psalm in the Psalter that is almost black. Out of the depths I cry to you. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. You have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths, and my closest friend is darkness. That last line is in your Bible. Psalm 88 ends in the dark and does not turn around, and it was long thought to be a mistake, an unfinished poem, an oversight. It is none of those. It is a mercy.

Because someone was going to need it. Someone was going to walk into the garden on the worst night of a life, unable to sing anything, unable to bear being told one more time that God is good, and that person was going to find that God himself had planted a flower the color of their grief, and left it standing there on purpose, for them. You are allowed the dark psalm. It is not a lapse of faith to pray it; it is Scripture. What a diversity of roses. And yet, held together in one garden by one Gardener, what a harmony.