“When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it’s like they are holding the baby of you.” ~ Anne Lamott
Before my faithful coffeemaker has sighed its morning offering, I have already sung a lament or two. No cheerful humming, or eagerly thrown back curtains usher in my day.
All is not right and I can’t forget it, not with the news as close as my Twitter feed. Not with the cruel arrogance of the haves and their careless abuse of the have-nots, tossed fresh-printed onto my driveway every dawn.
I’m always caught by surprise when bad things happen, as if I were the author of life and when I’m not looking my words wander off the page, wreaking their distressing havoc.
So I lament, but I’m not good at it. I become no better than those I despise by the end of the second verse.
Songs of Lament
It’s amazing they are in the Bible at all, the poems, the songs, and the prophets’ outraged cries. With blunt, sometimes blood thirsty honesty, lament grabs God by the collar and refuses to let him go.
Deliver me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked….I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears…How long, O LORD: Will you forget me forever?….Do not put me to shame, O LORD, for I call on you; let the wicked be put to shame; let them go dumbfounded to Sheol…Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them…In your faithfulness put an end to them (From Psalms 3, 6, 13, 31, 35, 54).
Is God really okay with unfiltered fury, with tear-choked thoughts only our pillows can stomach?
Yes. Oh, yes. Let me introduce you to the One who will not flinch from our pain.
The psalmists and prophets complain without fear. In their verses we watch wide-eyed as predators pounce, close friends betray, enemies mock, sufferings loom, vengeance is demanded when God seems suspiciously slow to act.
Why bother?
But what good is lament, when each day brings new material? This may come as a surprise but these psalms were designed for worship, were sung together in the most sacred of places. Why? Because lament serves as a template for healing, it guides our visceral, vengeful thoughts to more dependable ground.
God attentively listens until every complaint is exhausted, and then whispers hope where we thought there was none.
When I thought, ‘My foot is slipping’, your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul” (Psalm 94:17-19).
The psalms of lament give voice to early morning angst too risky to share, and lead to an embrace too wonderful to miss.
Have you prayed the psalms of lament?
In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: M is for Wisdom, Muddled.
