Lamentations

I feel this heavy weight on my soul every time I log onto social media, or open my phone to a news story that pours out the brokenness of this world. So many people hurting, so many ostracized, so many disenfranchised, so many lost. And I feel overwhelmed. I told a friend last week that I just want to volunteer somewhere new every day of every week and help ALL the people. Anyone else feel this? Anyone else want to single-handedly heal the world? It's daunting. It hangs over my head as the standard I can never reach.

In my class this semester we are taking a long look at God's mission for His people. We are gazing into Scripture to see what God's heart is for this place that is shattered into a million pieces. We are reading about how each and every person is imprinted with the image of God, reminding ourselves that each person has immeasurable value. We are pouring over texts that remind us that we are the broken ones, that Jesus left His comfort to reach into our muck. It is then that we are prompted to leave our own comfort and enter into the muck of others, not as experts who have so much to offer, but as equally fractured people who know what it's like to desperately need a Savior.

Last night I read this beautiful article about the importance of lament as a spiritual discipline ("The Discipline of Lament"). The authors call us to locate ourselves in the middle of the pain, to unlearn our desire for a quick fix, and to truly look at our role in the suffering of others. Will we do it? Will we walk out of our comfort and into the darkest places on earth? Will we leave our homes and safety to open our eyes to where hurting lives? Will we allow our hearts to break without a band-aid big enough to stop the gushing? For if we walk into the darkness where such ache and torture dwells, we will find problems too big for us to solve. We will truly find the end of ourselves:

The first language of the church in a deeply broken world is not strategy, but prayer. The journey of reconciliation is grounded in a call to see and encounter the rupture of this world so truthfully that we are literally slowed down. We are called to a space where any explanation or action is too easy, too fast, too shallow-- a space where the right response can only be a desperate cry directed to God. We are called to learn the anguished cry of lament. (Katongole and Rice)

I can't speak for the rest of the people in this world, but I know my own heart. I know that I don't want to stand face to face with a problem I cannot fix. I do not want to hear the cry of someone whose heart is irreparable. I know the discomfort of the silence of weeping for genuine, real loss that cannot be explained away or quickly healed. It is excruciating. And even when we have the larger Hope of Jesus, the Hope of a healed world to come, we are unable to step away from the uncontrollable sobs of the world languishing under the curse of sin.

But when we step into the darkness, when we choose to open our eyes to the horrors of this world, we are granted the weighty reminder that we cannot fix this. We can't. We just don't have the resources. We don't have the patience. We don't have the long-suffering love necessary to heal the deep despair in this world. It is when we come to this stark reality, when we see our own limits, that we lament.



Lament is not despair. It is not whining. It is not a cry into the void. Lament is a cry directed to God. It is the cry of those who see the truth of the world's deep wounds and the cost of seeking peace. It is the prayer of those who are deeply disturbed by the way things are. We are enjoined to learn to see and feel what the psalmists see and feel and to join our prayers with theirs. The journey of reconciliation is grounded in the practice of lament. (Katongole and Rice)


I find this so reassuring. I love that God wants us to despair and cry out to Him. He doesn't ask us to suffer in silence. He doesn't want us to turn our eyes away and pretend like the agony is not there. He doesn't require us to bear the burden of brokenness alone. Instead, He says, "Lament. Cry out to me! I see the pain, I see the inequality, I see the anguish. Let me cry with you. Let me hear your heart for these people whom I love so. Thank you for letting your heart break for what breaks My own heart.

"I'm still here. I'm still at work. Join me. But I'm warning you. It won't be easy. You probably won't see the healing in your lifetime. You'll see glimmers, you'll see small steps. But I've been at this healing a long time. The time for complete restoration hasn't come yet."

God is waiting. He is waiting for us to enter into the mangled world. He is waiting for us to locate ourselves in the suffering. Not because He knows we'll have the answers. Not because He wants us to come up with the grand plan to save us all. And not because He wants us to suffer. He wants us to walk into this fractured firmament because He wants us to cry with Him, to love with Him, to serve with Him. He wants us to be reminded of the painful ripples of sin, to see just how desperately we need Him. It is in our desperation that we pray.

I have to admit that I'm not great at prayer. I pray, I talk to God often throughout the day. I pray for people. I pray for healing. I pray for changed circumstances. I pray for God to break strongholds and set people free. But I often just say these things before God, not certain the answer matters. I wonder if my words matter, if prayer changes anything. But so many of the things I pray for can be lived through, can be solved with enough waiting or enough resources from the right people. I am not in a position where I need to ask God to feed my family this day. I am not begging God to free me from addiction. I am not asking God to protect my family from the evil that encompasses my neighborhood. I am not desperate for the Lord's intervention.

It is when we orient ourselves in the really broken places of this world, it's when we listen to the heartache behind the happy facades, it's when we walk into the places where evil has wrecked it's most havoc, that we cry from the depths of our heart for the Lord to move. This is where real faith and real prayer begins.

This is a discipline. It takes practice to press into pain, to step into brokenness with no agenda other than to dwell among it. It takes diligence to not turn around and hightail it out of the darkness into the safe and warm. But until we open our eyes to the fallen world, we cannot cry out to the Lord for His healing to come. Until we see the pain, we cannot know that systems and programs won't bring wholeness, only the love of God will. Until we are reminded of the despair sin brings, we cannot grieve our own sin and rejoice in the goodness of all that Jesus has done.

Finally, then, through lament we come to that hard place of knowing that we cannot "achieve" reconciliation. It is always a gift from God...Lament shapes reconciliation as a long and costly journey that is impossible without receiving the gifts God offers--forgiveness, the promise that our sacrifice is worth it, the patience to stay in an agonizing place and wait for God's reply. (Katongole and Rice)

My prayer for myself: "Lord, let these not merely be words on a page. May lamentation be a rhythm of my life. My I sit with the hurting, hearing their anguish, and cry out to You alongside of them. May I be a woman who seeks reconciliation through the agonizing journey of patient praying, acting and waiting. Amen."