Living with Lament

Beloved People of God,

It’s been said that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is painfully true. More than we might care to admit, we approach complicated tasks ill-equipped and—not sure what to do—we start swinging our proverbial hammers. When God blesses us, we nail down His goodness in our lives with the hammer of praise. But when we experience suffering, when we find ourselves in the dark, not sure where we are or how we got here, a hammer is less than helpful. In the dark, we need a flashlight. We may not like what we see, but we need to face it all the same.

It’s understandable why we want to hammer away at our problems. It’s heavy, solid, secure. We’ve seen the power of our praise in past trials (Acts 16). But when our lives fall apart and we face suffering and sickness which feel endless, the once vibrant songs of rejoicing become brittle with use. The hammer of exultation strikes painfully on our raw nerves. What once created happiness in our lives now compounds our pain. We need the flashlight of lament.

In our times of suffering and sorrow we need to be embraced in the grace of lament which allows us to grieve before God, to express our anger and confusion before the Lord. This type of prayer does not negate our praise. It enriches it. When we are able to follow Jeremiah’s example and give voice to our affliction, we discover a way to the altar of the Lord we didn’t have before. The hammer of praise couldn’t bring us here; only honest, unfiltered prayers of lament could light this way into the presence of the Lord.

Beloved, it is in this place before God, where our lament illuminates all our pain before the Father, that we discover Christ who weeps with us. Instead of hiding behind the hammer of praise, we have followed the lit path the Lord promised us, into His loving embrace (Psalm 119.105).

For Christ the King, 

Brett