Learning to Lament

Earlier this month, I was reading an article on suffering.  A young man serving in Sierra Leone had lost his fiancée.  He writes:

“Questions abounded. How I talk about Benita’s death to the God who could have prevented it and didn’t?  Isn’t that like blaming God? Is it wrong to blame God?  But how do I not blame God? How could God be almighty and not responsible? I understand that the Bible teaches that God is both good and sovereign, but how those two truths related to my present reality was beyond me. 

Despite all I had learned about prayer in my life, I had no idea how to communicate with God about my grief.  I knew how to thank God, praise God, ask God for help and even confess my sins to God.  I was clueless, though, about how to talk with God about grief. I needed lessons in the language of lament.” 

The young man continued his story sharing how he learned to lament, to weep in anger, deep sorrow, with a true sense of missing.  Today we lost a very dear person to our church family and it struck me that many of us struggle with the same thing that the man in Sierra Leone did, we don’t know how lament. 

The scriptures are full of laments--cries of sorrow from the depths of people’s pain.  Turn to the Psalms. Turn to Lamentations. Let the words of scriptures be our words as we lament.  Get angry.  Let tears flow.  Let sadness come.  Grieve. And remember that even in the midst of unexplainable pain, God’s promise is that we are not alone in the pit.  God is there taking it all and delighting in your honesty.  Remember, my beloved brothers and sisters, that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of God.