Learning from Lament

Beloved People of God,

We need to learn from lament. From Leah to Lamentations, from Israel’s ancient patriarchs to the Church’s Apostles, we are embraced by the grace of lament. When we strive to live endlessly happy (unrealistic) lives, we miss the grace of lament which seasons our prayer life. Put it this way: biblically, we have a whole spice rack available, but we only pinch a little salt and black pepper out occasionally and wonder why our spiritual food is bland. 

On the way to the cross, Jesus burst the triumphal bubble of the disciples who were busy polishing their résumés, preparing to follow their Messiah into political office. He told them they would weep and mourn and grieve. Jesus embraced His disciples with the grace of lament—something they were hardly looking for! He did this so that in the depth of their unfathomable grief, they would remember despite their troubles, He’d overcome the world (John 16). Jesus was seasoning their prayer with lament.

Lament is not a baseless complaining or senseless whining. Lament is purposeful. Lament is prayer. Lament is our raw, unfiltered, and honest laying out the shards and shrapnel of our grief, choosing to place it all into the hands of God. We don’t need to wait to make sense of the senseless before we bring it. Jesus makes room for us before the throne of God our Father to bring our grief and pain as it is right now. As Leslie Allen says, the poet in Lamentations “counsels that his people's deep anger over their wartime and postwar experiences should be brought to Yahweh as the one who has the providential power to bring about justice.” They don’t have to put the puzzle pieces together before they enter God’s presence. They can come, jumbled and hurt and confused. In lament, they can come with their complaint, expecting God to reconcile all things, building their faith on His character and promises.

We need to learn from lament, and yet—like “good little Christians”—we hold back. We get stalled out with our irrational need to answer our own questions instead of bringing them fractured and fragmented as they are to God. We drive ourselves crazy trying to play God in our lives. Beloved, we need to learn to lament.

For Christ the King, 

Brett