The Gift of Lament
We feel it in our bodies… shoulders hiked up, chests tight, minds awhirl. If we make space to notice, we find our spirits rumpled and more likely bedraggled or even shredded, depending on the day. Do you ever get the feeling that our souls were never meant to bear the weight of the world? That we weren’t created for chaos from across the globe and catastrophes in high definition assaulting our senses and our psyches 24/7? That even what confronts us in our own lives and the lives of those we love is too much? That being an ostrich with its head in the sand or a turtle withdrawn into its shell might be preferable to the seemingly inescapable barrage of devastation?
Photo credit: Rosalyn Otto
Wait a minute, though… what about “count it all joy” and “be of good cheer” and “more than conquerors” and “life abundantly” and all the other phrases and passages from Scripture that sound so wonderful? All true and, honestly, hard at times to reconcile with this broken world and our messy lives. As John Eldredge sagely observed, “We live in a love story in the midst of war.” So what’s a person to do?
Could it be that God gave us the gift of lament as an antidote that can companion us through the pain of grief and the soul-sickness of navigating life between the “now” and the “not yet” and draw us closer to Himself? Maybe “gift” and “lament” sound like an oxymoron. After all, lament isn’t a word we use all that often, but it sure doesn’t evoke images of merriment and holidays and celebration! And yet … perhaps lament is a gift that the modern, western church has misunderstood and underestimated. As Michael Card observed, “… at every major turning point in Jesus’ ministry He poured His heart out in lament … Jesus spoke fluently the lost language of lament” (A Sacred Sorrow). What did Jesus know about lament that we need to understand and value?
Lament allows us to pour out our hearts, our anger, our sorrow, our bewilderment to God and agree with Him that “this is not the way things are meant to be!” No need for pretense. Not only no need but also no room for posturing, for pasting a smile on our faces and replying, “I’m fine,” when asked how we are. I’ve heard it said that more lies are told on Sunday morning than at any other time in the week. Perhaps not original to them, but as my late husband confided to me, at some point he and his “band of brothers” were reflecting on the chasm between “I’m fine” and how they genuinely felt and concluded that “fine” actually must be an acronym for “Frustrated, Insecure, Neurotic, and Exhausted.” God longs for us to come to Him with honesty. He is neither surprised nor offended by our raw emotions and messy questions.
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Scripture is rife with examples of people expressing lament. More than a third of the psalms are songs of lament. David, designated by God as a man after His own heart, expressed deep lament: “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?” (Psalm 13:1). Daniel, a man “treasured by God” (Dan 10:11) lamented. So did many of the prophets. Martha lamented, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. …” (John 11:21) Unquestionably the biblical figure most often associated with lament is Job. And Job didn’t hold back in expressing lament to God (Job 3:11,20,23-26):
“Why wasn’t I born dead?
Why didn’t I die as I came from the womb?
Oh, why give light to those in misery,
and life to those who are bitter?
Why is life given to those with no future,
those God has surrounded with difficulties?
I cannot eat for sighing;
my groans pour out like water.
What I always feared has happened to me.
What I dreaded has come true.
I have no peace, no quietness.
I have no rest; only trouble comes.”
Truthfully, such gut-wrenching honesty, so raw and unfiltered, can be uncomfortable to witness and feel ungodly to express. We tend to believe that the “wisdom” shared by Job’s so-called “friends” would be more acceptable to God: “Doesn’t your reverence for God give you confidence? Doesn’t your life of integrity give you hope? “(Job 4:6). Yet God engaged Job in his lament, revealing His power and sovereignty. After Job confessed, “I was talking about things I knew nothing about, things far too wonderful for me. … I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance” (Job 42:3,6), and in what feels like a completely unexpected turn of events, God rebuked Job’s friends: “I am angry with you …, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). Even if we get the words “wrong”, our complete honesty is what God longs for. As David professed, “You desire truth in the innermost being” (Ps 51:6). Could it be that God is honored by our lament?
What Job’s friends didn’t understand is that lament is an act of trust! When we turn to God in our deep pain, our utter bewilderment, our rage at injustice, our brokenness over sin, our unmet longings, we are acting on the belief that He cares, and He can do something about it. So our lament, as raw as it may be, is actually an act of worship. We are giving voice to the lived conviction that God is worthy of us bringing our full selves to Him in honesty and humility. We are admitting, as Peter did, “Lord, who else can we go to?” (John 6:68). And it opens the door to a deeper knowing of God, as we experience Him in more intimate ways. As Job exclaimed, “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes” (Job 42:5).
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A refusal to lament is, at the very least, a missed opportunity to be honest with ourselves and God. It may feel safer not to risk lamenting. After all, as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry observed, “It's so mysterious, the land of tears,” uncharted and untamed. However, at its core, failure to lament is an affront to God. It is tacitly admitting to our good Father that we don’t trust Him to care, or we don’t trust that He is big enough to handle our pain and raw emotions, or we don’t trust that He is powerful enough to work redemptively in the situation.
In lament, we bring our whole selves to God, affirming our trust in Him, pouring out our hearts to Him, giving voice to the questions without answers, confessing the ways that we have fallen short, and appealing to who we know Him to be. And we are met by our God who lives His names: Father of Compassion and God of All Comfort, Immanuel, Ancient of Days… Though our circumstances may not change, much like Jacob in His wrestling, we will not come away unchanged from our wrestling with God in lament.
I must confess: I began this post several weeks ago, and then we, in the young adults group that I have hosted for the past three years, lost one of our own to suicide. Sweet, funny, and thoughtful, he was precious to me. He left behind a wife of barely six months and a community who had no idea of the pain he secretly carried. I took a walk with Jesus the morning after sitting with his devastated mama and lamented, “It’s too much! It’s too much!” I sat with his shattered widow a couple of days later, offering empathy in a silence deeper than words. His death came just five days before the seventh anniversary of my husband’s suicide. Truly, there are no words… And for weeks I had no words to write.
Photo credit: Rosalyn Otto
With God there is no such thing as coincidence. God put this topic of lament on my heart months ago and it had been gestating ever since. Tragically, I have found myself with an unexpected choice to walk out what I believe about God and about lament. As I sat with Jesus a few days ago, words flowed from my heart to my pen and I “prayed on paper” (as I so often experience my journaling to be): m
O Lord …
I have no words.
Seventeen days later.
Seven years and eleven days later.
I have been here before.
And here I am, again,
Without words.
But I have You, O Christ,
The Word.
And far better still …
You, the Word, have me.
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Written by: Rosalyn Otto