Weekly Roundup: Suffering and Lament
When confronted with suffering, Christians—myself especially—are guilty of slapping Truth Band-Aids on the gaping wounds of the human heart. News flash: it doesn’t work. The deepest pains of the human heart are not healed with a trite truth or by quoting a Bible verse. It’s not that truth is irrelevant to suffering, but that we ought to first weep with those who weep, not correct them.
Indeed, a faithful response to suffering often ought to be lament: a raw, crying out to God of faith that ultimately rests in Him. This week’s articles are all about lament: what it is, its importance, and how to do it. May you be freed to cry out to God as His beloved child.
Resources
You Cannot Handle Your Pain: Looking for God in Lament | J.A. Medders | Desiring God
You’ve heard people say, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” Wrong. Tucked into this dollar-store saying is a sense of self-reliance: I can make it. I should be able to do this on my own. But Christianity is the abandonment of our self-reliance: “God, I need you!” His power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). For all of our I-can’t-evens, there is our God who can and our Savior who did.
Why We Added a Prayer of Lament to Our Sunday Gathering | Neal Wollard | 9Marks
The world is not as it should be—and we feel it. From natural disasters to school shootings to personal tragedies, we’ve all been affected by the brokenness of a fallen world. We yearn for Jesus’ return to right all wrongs and renew our world, freeing us from the chaos and grief that accompanies deep suffering.
But until that day, what do we do with our grief? What do we do right now while we’re in the thick of it? We lament.
What Can Miserable Christians Sing? | Carl Trueman | 9Marks
This is Trueman at his best: raw, punchy analysis of the culture. In this classic essay, he takes on the idols of evangelical worship: health, wealth, and prosperity.
Much agony, much lamentation, occasional despair—and joy, when it manifests itself, is very different from the frothy triumphalism that has infected so much of our modern Western Christianity. In the psalms, God has given the church a language which allows it to express even the deepest agonies of the human soul in the context of worship. Does our contemporary language of worship reflect the horizon of expectation regarding the believer’s experience which the psalter proposes as normative? If not, why not? Is it because the comfortable values of Western middle-class consumerism have silently infiltrated the church and made us consider such cries irrelevant, embarrassing, and signs of abject failure?
Be sure to read his reflections on the original article as well.
On the Christian Practice of Lament (with Mark Vroegop) | 9Marks Pastors’ Talk
A conversation about lamenting in the church. Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust.
John Piper’s Funeral Prayer for a Family of Five | John Piper | Desiring God
On Sunday, July 31, 2016, an entire family of five entered heaven together when a semi truck rear-ended their vehicle. A week later, John Piper prayed this prayer of lament.
What Does a Prayer of Lament Sound Like? | 9Marks
These are a couple of transcribed prayers of lament from Hinson Baptist Church, located in Portland, OR.
Songs of Lament
I know of very few Christian worship songs of lament, but here are three that come to mind. (If you know of others, please comment below!)
Sample Psalms
As many of the above articles have said, the book of Psalms is God’s book for us that demonstrates what it means to lament. I recommend Psalms 42, 43, and 44 especially.
Psalm 44:9–11, 20-–6
Yet You have rejected us and brought us to dishonor,
And do not go out with our armies.
You cause us to turn back from the adversary;
And those who hate us have taken spoil for themselves.
You give us as sheep to be eaten
And have scattered us among the nations.
[…]
If we had forgotten the name of our God
Or extended our hands to a strange god,
Would not God find this out?
For He knows the secrets of the heart.
But for Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
Arouse Yourself, why do You sleep, O Lord?
Awake, do not reject us forever.
Why do You hide Your face
And forget our affliction and our oppression?
For our soul has sunk down into the dust;
Our body cleaves to the earth.
Rise up, be our help,
And redeem us for the sake of Your lovingkindness.
Photo by Matteo Catanese on Unsplash