We all know the feeling of being full of faith or aware of God’s presence that makes us feel like anything is possible. The capable and robust sense that I can handle whatever comes my way.
The feeling of stability or readiness is not only where we do our best work, but it is also where we sense God working through us. We feel challenged, yet capable of meeting the challenge.
But how much of our day is actually spent there? It is not long before things don’t go according to plan. We might be forced to do activities that drain you to the point of exhaustion and leave you wondering, why am I doing this. What has become of my life?
Some events or circumstances come along that completely overwhelm us. Or maybe it is all the unresolved things that remain in the background that finally push us over the edge.
When we get to this point, we don’t make the wisest decisions. We lose our patience, take it out on others, and end up doing the greatest thing that we regret.
Navigating the Overwhelm
When we get to this point, the inner critic starts gets us to turn on ourselves. We begin to question ourselves and wonder if we have what it takes.
This rabbit hole only leads to more isolation as we become more convinced that it is all up to me. No one can help me. I need to make it happen on my own.
There is a way that we can vent and complain and let it all out, and it leads to God’s presence—complaining to God the pathway to his provision. Lament is the tunnel thought the darkness that brings us into the light of God’s equipping.
We have been wronged. Someone is out to get us. Something is overpowering or attacking me. I am being taken over.
When the pressure gets too high, we end up hurting the ones we love—damaging the relationships that mean the most to us. Tearing down the things we have been trying to build.
The Desert Experience
This sense of isolation and despair is the desert experience. Dry and parched. Hot and dusty. It is so bad you can hardly swallow, let alone speak.
We all hate this experience and wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
So many Bible narratives occur in the desert. Moses fled into the desert. God brings him back to lead them out of captivity, only to lead the Israelites in their desert wandering.
Job, the oldest book in the Bible, has his desert experience. What’s more, his “friends” makes it worse. He is all alone, lost everyone, lost everything.
If nobody cares, then it is all up to me. If God cares about us, it wouldn’t be this way. Because things are this way, it means that God doesn’t care for me.
The desert metaphor often occurs in the Psalms, but no better than Psalm 42, as a deer pants for streams of water. Note that this isn’t an image of a deer in a pleasant little forest grove in Wisconsin. This deer is in the desert. There are no streams, and if the deer don’t find water, it will die.
Psalm 42
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude,
leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my savior and my God.
Psalm 42:1-5
The psalmist is in total despair, with nothing to drink but his tears. It feels like God has abandoned him. The community he had, celebrating God’s goodness are nowhere to be found. People laugh and taunt him and ask him where your God is?
He starts to dialog with himself and question his soul. He is trying to lift his eyes from himself to God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therfore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon – from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is within me-
a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to my God, my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my savior and my God.
Psalm 42:6-11
What is Lament For?
The process of lament is to bring your complaints before God, not so we stay stuck there. The outcome is to move through the despair and come to a place of praise and adoration towards God. We lament by taking our pain to God, allow him to process it, and turn things around.
King David, the prominent writer of lament Psalms, was no stranger to tough times. He was anointed King, yet the incumbent, King Saul’s wouldn’t relinquish the throne and was after David. The day Saul died in battle, making David the King, was also the day he lost his best friend, Johnathan.
He had remarkable conquests on the battlefield only to abuse his power by taking another man’s wife as a conquest in the bedroom.
We all know that he was know as the man after God’s own heart. But also some of the darkest, most heartbreaking poetry in all of scripture, God Word, came from his broken heart.
David lashed out at God. He didn’t hold back.
Why We Hold Back
For me, praying Pslams of Lament can be challenging. Often I read them in double time, kind of like listening to a podcast at high speed, just to get through them quicker.
A myth that we buy into is that complaining about how hard things are is a lack of faith. If we just believe enough or trust enough, then we wouldn’t be so negative about things. But God wants all of us, whatever it may be. I have come to find out that bringing despair and painful things before God requires more faith than just bringing positive things.
Another issue that I have with many of the Lament Psalms is how David calls down curses on his enemies. At first, I thought I could just do this with the Devil, or biggest enemy. But for David, it was specific people in his life. Am I allowed to do that? Didn’t Jesus tell us to love our enemies?
Bringing our anger towards others to God in prayer is the healthiest way to deal with it. He is aware of our anger and is big enough to handle it. We are not. Lamenting about it is the only way to processes it so that we don’t act out on it.
The main thing we get from David is permission to complain. It is the pathway to God’s presence. It is the way that we go from self-focused, looking inward, staring at our navel to lifting our focus to God, seeing him, and allowing him to give you perspective.
Making the Turn
There is always an abrupt shift in a Pslam of Lament when it turns from darkness into light. It can be startling and will take you by surprise. It is where we go from an I-IT relationship, focused on ourselves, to an I-THOU relationship, focused on God and others.
We go from venting, knowing that he can hold it, to experience Him holding me. God is with me. He is merciful. He loves me.
The turn is not prominent in Psalm 42. Apparently, at one time, Psalm 42 and 43 were connected as one long Psalm, which makes sense as they both contain many of the same words.
The more I go through the 28 day Psalms Schedule, the more perfect the layout becomes. According to this schedule, Psalm 42 is the last prayer prayed before bed, and Psalm 43 is the first one in the morning.
Both Psalms are a lament, however splitting them up, one at the dark of night and one in light of morning, help you make the turn that characterizes a biblical lament.
Splitting the turn between days helps make it less forced. And it enables you to make the turn from complaint to praise more easily. As I face challenges, resistance, and opposition, I acknowledge to God what I am up against. Then Psalm 43 comes to mind send out your light and your truth, let them lead me, bring me into your presence so I can worship you. This has become a moment to moment way to pray a lament.
Psalm 43
Vindicate me, O God,
and plead my cause against an ungodly nation;
rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.
You are my stronghold.
Why have you rejected me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?
Send forth your light and your truth,
let them guide me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God, my joy, and my delight.
I will praise you with the harp,
O God, my God
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my savior and my God.
Psalm 43:1-5
Learning To Turn
There has never been a more critical time in history to learn to do this. By allowing God to handle our pain, it becomes easier to be kind.
If we don’t, it leads to aggression, cruelty, and it is dangerous when we take it out on the ones we love.
If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.
Richard Rohr
How To Pray a Biblical Lament
There are four main steps of a lament. This is not a formula to get whatever you want when things aren’t going your way. Wave your magic wand and fix it. Make all this terrible stuff go away.
Lament is the way to get more of God. More of his presence. I am wanting God and wanting what God wants for me.
- Crying out – addressing God, maybe use a name for God or an attribute of God’s character that resonates with you. This is an essential step of coming into God’s presence as a way of bringing His struggles to him.
- Complain – lodge your complaint and drop it in God’s “suggestion” box. Don’t hold back. Bring it all to God. Make it as juicy as it needs to be. When you have gone as far as you can go – bring more! And no matter how far you have gone, the psalmist has always gone further, been darker than I have ever been willing to go.
- Remember – This can be abrupt after reading God the riot act. After you have exhausted all that you can, this is where you fall into God’s arms with a weary sigh. Allow it to come at its own pace. It is okay to wait a day or two and come back to it. It actually helps step back to have some distance, and allow the turn to reveal itself. But recall and state how God has worked in your life in the past. Recognize when God’s arms of support have been there for you. Acknowledge it and thank him for it.
- Praise – No matter how bleak the situation, it doesn’t diminish God’s goodness. As you are able, show him he is worthy of your praise. You may want o make a promise to him or a commitment to remain faithful and remain in a relationship with him.
As we lament, we are giving voice to separation and isolation we feel from God. When Jesus hung on the cross, his last words were a lament from Psalm 22, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
At that moment, Jesus was separated from God. But that is the moment that ensured we would never be separated from God.
Reflection Question:
How long, O God?
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And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39
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