Lament is not a marginal posture of faith but one of its God-given languages. The Bible refuses to flatten human sorrow into stoic silence or to sanctify it away with premature triumph. Instead, Scripture gives voice to grief and bewilderment and places that voice on the lips of the faithful, including the lips of the Son of God Himself. The role of lament in Job, Psalm 44, and Psalm 88, and in the laments of Jesus in Matthew 23:37–39, Luke 13:34–35, the Garden of Gethsemane, and at the Cross, discloses lament as covenant speech, as the time-tested grammar of hope under pressure. What follows is an exegetical and theological exploration of these texts.
What Scripture Means by Lament
In Biblical literature, lament is not mere complaint; it is a faith-filled appeal that presses the covenantal “why” to the God of steadfast love. Two Hebrew adverbs for “why” recur in lament: lāmmāh and maddûaʿ, both introducing questions of divine action or inaction. For example, “Why do you hide your face?” in Psalm 44:24 employs lāmmāh and addresses God directly: the psalmist does not speak about God but to God. That direct address is covenantal. Lament presumes a relationship.
The act of “crying out” often employs qārāʾ (to call), signaling invocation rather than mutiny. When lamenters allege “forsakenness,” they employ verbs like ʿāzab (“forsake, abandon”) in Hebrew, and in the Gospels the cry “Why have you forsaken me?” translates the Greek verb egkataleipō (“to abandon, desert”). Lament thereby inhabits the friction between divine promises and present experience, appealing to God’s loving-kindness (steadfast love) and ʾĕmûnâ or ʾtruth (faithfulness). This is why lament is a mode of hope, not its denial.
Job: The Innocent Sufferer Who Refuses Simplistic Theodicy
Job is introduced as “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1, ESV). The Hebrew pair tām (“blameless, complete”) and yāšār (“upright”) establishes an exemplary moral status. Job’s piety is expressed by yereʾ ʾĕlōhîm (“fearing God”) and sūr mēraʿ (“turning from evil”), a formula of covenant fidelity. The narrative immediately undercuts the doctrine of strict retribution that Job’s friends later defend, since Job’s sufferings precede and do not result from moral failure.
Job’s prayers display the rhetoric of lament as a covenant lawsuit. He pleads a rîb (legal “case”) and longs for mišpāṭ (justice) before God. He does not hide his agony, and he does not conceal his protest. He says, “I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me” (Job 10:1–2, ESV). Here, “complaint” translates Hebrew śîaḥ or śîḥâ in some lament contexts, and to “contend” evokes the legal metaphor of God as litigant. Job insists on truth in the presence of the Truth.
The book’s sustained argument challenges easy correlations between sin and disaster. Job’s refusal of his friends’ theodicy is not rebellion but faith’s moral clarity. Notably, Job’s confession “I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19:25, ESV) introduces gōʾēl, the kinsman-redeemer who vindicates the wronged. Even when Job charges God with hiding his face, he appeals to God to be the one who resolves the contradiction. In Biblical lament one does not exit the relationship; one pleads within it.
This point is essential for Christian practice in communal crisis. To jump immediately to explanations, especially punitive ones, can silence the voices of the innocent and short-circuit authentic prayer. The Bible’s vision is different. It allows, indeed requires, a vocabulary large enough to hold the mystery of undeserved suffering within the covenant.
Psalm 44: Communal Protest based on Covenant Love
Psalm 44 is a communal lament that combines historical memory, assertion of fidelity, and daring protest. The psalm begins with testimony: “O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days” (Psalm 44:1, ESV). The community confesses that past victories were not achieved “by their own sword,” but “for you delighted in them” (Psalm 44:3, ESV). The key motif is God’s electing grace.
The shock enters in verses 9–16, which narrate an experience of defeat. The psalmist asserts that this catastrophe is not the result of apostasy: “All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way” (Psalm 44:17–18, ESV). The language is covenantal: to be “false” is to deal treacherously. The Hebrew verb bāgad often carries connotations of covenant disloyalty, yet the psalm denies this. In verse 17 the phrase “we have not forgotten you” recalls zākar (“remember”), a verb critical for covenant fidelity. The psalm claims that in this case, retributive explanations do not apply.
The psalm then speaks of God’s apparent absence in verbs of sleep and forgetfulness. “Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!” (Psalm 44:23, ESV). The imperative “Awake” translates ʿûr, an urgent summons; “Rouse yourself” uses qîṣ, “arise from sleep.” These are bold anthropomorphic pleas, sanctioned by Scripture. The psalm then prays, “Why do you hide your face?” (Psalm 44:24, ESV). “Hide” renders sātar, and “face” is pānîm, the locus of relational presence. “Hiding of the face” signals covenant eclipse, not covenant negation. The psalm appeals to God’s loving-kindness in its final line: “Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!” (Psalm 44:26, ESV). “Redeem” is pādâ, the language of exodus deliverance, and loving-kindness names God’s covenantal commitment. Even protest is framed by faith in God’s character.
Psalm 44, therefore, models the Church’s speech in times when communities suffer through no evident fault of their own. It grants the faithful a way to say, with integrity and reverence, “Why?” on the basis of God’s historic mercies. The psalm resists the temptation to imagine that God’s love has ended; instead, it insists that the God who once redeemed must and will redeem again.
Psalm 88: The Lament That Ends in Darkness
If Psalm 44 is bold, Psalm 88 is nearly unbearable in its intensity. Its uniqueness in the Psalter lies in its lack of turn to praise. It ends with the devastating line, “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness” (Psalm 88:18, ESV). The Hebrew could be read, “darkness is my closest companion,” emphasizing isolation.
The vocabulary of Psalm 88 is the lexicon of the abyss. The psalmist says, “For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol” (Psalm 88:3, ESV). “Soul” is nephesh, the living self; “Sheol” is the realm of the dead, the grave. The psalmist speaks of the “pit” with bôr, of “depths” with meṣôlâ, and of “darkness” with ḥōšeḵ and maḥašakîm. The verbs for divine action are relentless: “you have put me in the depths of the pit” (v. 6), “you have overwhelmed me with all your waves” (v. 7), “you have caused my companions to shun me” (v. 8), “your wrath has swept over me” (v. 16), “your dreadful assaults destroy me” (v. 16). The psalm attributes agency to God, as lament often does, because it refuses to pretend that God is a passive observer of history.
Yet even here, litanies of interrogatives persist as prayers. “Do you work wonders for the dead?” “Do the departed rise up to praise you?” “Is your steadfast love declared in the grave?” “Are your wonders known in the darkness?” (Psalm 88:10–12, ESV). The Hebrew terms peleʾ (wonder) and loving-kindness (steadfast love) appear again, and “darkness” revisits ḥōšeḵ. The questions implicitly appeal to the meaning of creation and covenant: the God of wonders and steadfast love is God precisely because His identity is known in the land of the living. Psalm 88 holds God to His own self-revelation by laying bare the reality of experience.
For the Church, Psalm 88 is a scriptural permission slip for nights when “hope” is not felt yet faith still prays. It is there to teach that the absence of consolations is not the same thing as the absence of God, and that faith without felt light remains faith. The psalm’s presence in the canon affirms that there are seasons in which obedience consists of nothing more and nothing less than continuing to address God from within the shadows.
Jesus Laments Over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37–39 and Luke 13:34–35
The Gospels portray Jesus as the true Israel, the faithful Son, and they therefore portray Him as Israel’s chief lamenter. His lament over Jerusalem is recorded in parallel in Matthew and Luke. Matthew’s version reads, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matthew 23:37–39, ESV).
Key Greek terms illuminate the force of this lament. The clause “How often would I have gathered” centers on ēthelēsa (“I desired, I willed”) and episynagagēin from episynagō (“to gather together”), an echo that resonates with the very idea of synagogue as gathering. Jesus’ desire is protective and maternal, “as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,” alluding to Old Testament refuge imagery under divine wings. The clause “and you were not willing” uses ouk ēthelēsate, setting Jerusalem’s will over against God’s will in Christ.
“Your house is left to you desolate” contains two solemn terms. “Is left” translates aphietai, a verb often used for forgiveness or release, but here it signals relinquishment. “Desolate” is erēmos, “wilderness, desolation.” The announcement that the “house” is left desolate invokes both the Temple and covenant life at large. Yet the lament ends with eschatological hope, citing Psalm 118:26: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” The lament thus balances judgment and hope, grief and promise.
Luke’s version has a similar core with a strategic variation: “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken” (Luke 13:34–35, ESV). Luke omits “desolate” and tightens the focus. The result is a Christological disclosure of divine desire frustrated by human resistance. Lament here is the revelation of love opposed.
Gethsemane: “If It Be Possible, Let This Cup Pass”
Shortly before the Cross, Jesus prays in Gethsemane. Matthew records, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39, ESV). The Greek “let this cup pass” employs parerchesthō (“to pass by”), and “cup” is potērion, a metaphor for the appointed suffering that includes the judgment-bearing dimensions of the Passion. Jesus sets “not as I will” (ou hōs egō thelō) over against “but as you will” (all’ hōs sy), not to oppose two divine wills, but to exhibit perfect filial alignment in the human will of the Son with the Father’s salvific will.
Mark adds the intimate vocative, “Abba, Father” (Mark 14:36, ESV), displaying covenant intimacy amid agony. Luke narrates that “his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44, ESV), and however one weighs the textual and physiological discussions, the aim is clear. Jesus enters the full extremity of human dread. The prayer is lament, because it names the terror of the hour without surrendering communion.
This prayer also rehearses the logic of Daniel 3’s “but if not.” Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego declared, “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods” (Daniel 3:17–18, ESV). The grammar of “able,” “will,” and “but if not” is the grammar of lamenting fidelity. It confesses God’s power and promises, pleads for deliverance, and resolves to trust even if deliverance tarries. Gethsemane perfects that grammar in the Son.
The Cry of Dereliction: “My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
At the Cross, Jesus prays, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, ESV; see Mark 15:34). Matthew preserves the Aramaic transliteration, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani,” together with its translation. The verb in the translation “forsaken” in Greek is egkataleipō, “to abandon, leave in the lurch.” The citation is from Psalm 22:1, and the original Hebrew uses ʿāzab, “forsake.” Jesus, therefore, prays Scripture back to the Father. The Son, who is the Eternal Word, prays the inspired words of the Psalms.
This prayer is not despair but a trusting protest that evokes the whole of Psalm 22, a psalm that moves from agony to praise. Even so, the form matters. Jesus names abandonment. He does not merely endure; He speaks to the God whose face is hidden. In doing so, He enters the deepest “hiding of the face,” the hēster panîm that Israel feared, and He bears it. The Cross gathers every unanswered “why” into the one Answered One, whose resurrection secures that no lament will be finally wasted.
“Now Is My Soul Troubled” John 12 and the Echo of Psalms 42–43
In John 12, as Jesus approaches His “hour,” He says, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name” (John 12:27–28a, ESV). The verb “troubled” is tetaraktai from tarassō, “to agitate, stir, trouble.” The perfect tense underscores a state of deep disturbance. As many scholars note, there is an echo of the lament psalms in which the psalmist says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” (Psalm 42:5, ESV). In the Greek of the Septuagint, the soul is perilypos, “deeply sorrowful,” and the imagery of inner turmoil resonates with John’s depiction of Jesus.
The juxtaposition in John 12 between the petition “save me from this hour” and the resolution “for this purpose I have come” displays the essence of sanctified lament. It names the desire for rescue and simultaneously yields to the redemptive necessity of the hour. Jesus moves from plea to doxology, “Father, glorify your name,” and the Father responds with a voice from heaven. Lament here is the path by which glory is discerned and embraced.
The Spirit’s Groaning as the Church’s Vocation
The Apostle Paul provides a theological horizon for the language of lament. “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now,” he writes, “and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22–23, ESV). The verb “groan” is stenazō, and in Romans 8:26 Paul adds that “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (ESV). The phrase stenagmois alalētois names ineffable sighs. Lament, therefore, is not only human; it is pneumatically indwelt. The Spirit groans within the Church’s groaning and turns lament into intercession in accordance with God's will.
Paul’s teaching guards against two distortions. First, lament is not unbelief. It is love longing for the world’s healing and for the visible triumph of resurrection within the created order. Second, lament is not resignation. It is participation in the divine pathos that draws history toward new creation. The outcome of such Spirit-led lament is the apostolic crescendo: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” and the unbreakable assurance that “nothing in all creation” can separate believers from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:31, 39, ESV). The road to that assurance, however, runs through the valley of “groanings too deep for words.”
A Biblical Theology of Lament
When we read Job, Psalm 44, Psalm 88, and the laments of Jesus together, a coherent Biblical theology of lament emerges.
First, lament is covenantal speech. Job’s legal idiom, Psalm 44’s appeal to loving-kindness, Psalm 88’s haunted interrogatives, and Jesus’ laments over Jerusalem and on the Cross all presuppose an existing relationship with God. The courage to lament flows from the confidence that God hears and that His character remains what He has revealed it to be.
Second, lament protests the mismatch between promise and circumstance without abandoning either. The logic is twofold: because God is faithful, the present devastation is intolerable; because God is faithful, the present devastation is addressed to Him in prayer. Psalm 44 holds both lines together with rare power.
Third, lament is not reducible to penitence, though penitence has its place. Job’s narrative exposes the cruelty of explaining away innocent suffering by simplistic appeals to punishment. Psalm 44 explicitly denies communal apostasy. Jesus’ laments over Jerusalem do name culpable resistance; nevertheless, His laments show that the first movement of Divine Love in the presence of sin is not detachment but grief and appeal.
Fourth, lament makes space for unresolved endings. Psalm 88’s darkness is canonical. The Church must resist the instinct to remove such psalms from its worship or to smooth them with explanatory gloss. Their presence keeps the Church truthful and hospitable to sufferers whose deliverance has not yet dawned.
Fifth, lament culminates christologically. In Jesus, Israel’s lament finds its perfect voice and decisive answer. He prays the psalms, speaks the “why” of Psalm 22 on the Cross, and embodies Psalm 44’s faithful sufferer. He also gathers Israel’s brood into His own care, even when the city refuses. In His resurrection, lament is not silenced; it is vindicated.
Key Lexical Windows: A Brief Excursus
A few key terms sharpen the exegetical profile of lament.hesed: Often translated “steadfast love,” “covenant loyalty,” or “lovingkindness.” In Psalm 44:26, the plea “Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love” invokes God’s unmerited, covenant-faithful commitment. Lament banks on loving-kindness.
ʾemet / ʾĕmûnâ: “Truth, faithfulness.” Lament does not accuse God of caprice; it argues on the basis of God’s faithfulness to His own nature and promises.
pānîm and hester pānîm: God’s “face” and the “hiding of the face.” “Why do you hide your face?” (Psalm 44:24, ESV) names felt absence. The grammar of prayer keeps speaking to God even when His face is hidden.
Sheol, bôr, ḥōšeḵ: “Grave,” “pit,” “darkness.” Psalm 88’s topography shows that Biblical prayer reaches into extremity. These terms are not literary decoration; they are the mapped terrain of the soul under siege.
gōʾēl: “Redeemer, vindicator.” Job’s confession aligns lament to resurrection hope. Even in protest, the sufferer expects vindication.
egkataleipō: “To forsake.” The Greek verb that renders Jesus’ cry adopts the precise register of abandonment and shows that the Son is not afraid to place the Psalm’s language in His own mouth.
stenagmois alalētois: “Groanings too deep for words.” Paul’s phrase grounds lament’s final efficacy in the Spirit’s intercession, securing that lament is not wasted breath but sanctified participation in God’s redeeming work.
Learning to Lament in the Church
If lament is covenantal speech grounded in the character of God and perfected in Christ, then the Church must recover lament as part of its ordinary piety. Several implications follow.
Liturgical practice. The Church should ensure that its prayers, songs, and readings make room for Biblical lament. Liturgies that leap from invocation to celebration without an interval of supplication risk catechizing congregations into a thin theology of glory. Psalm 88 belongs in public prayer. Scripture has authorized the cry, “How long, O Lord?” and the plea, “Why do you hide your face?” The Lord Jesus has authorized, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The faithful ought to be taught to pray these. Only then will the triumphant cadences mean what Scripture intends.
Catechesis in the difference between lament and grumbling. Lament addresses God, submits to God’s will, and clings to God’s promises. Grumbling turns away from God, hardens into cynicism, and refuses obedience. Daniel 3’s “but if not” clarifies the difference. The Church should teach that lament may coexist with obedience and that obedience often requires lament.
Communal solidarity. Psalm 44 models communal lament. The Church must learn to carry each other’s groanings, making intercession where pain local and global is acute. Lament sensitizes the heart to neglected sufferers. When believers lament their own losses faithfully, they often discover an enlarged capacity to hear the cries of others.
Moral discernment. Job’s narrative cautions against overconfident moral mathematics. In the wake of epidemics, natural disasters, or personal tragedies, the Church should resist declaring specific punishments for specific sins unless Scripture does so with clarity. The reflex to explain rather than pray often wounds the innocent and narrows the Church’s witness. Lament is not a refusal to examine sin; it is a refusal to weaponize explanation where prayer is required.
Resilience in mission. Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem reveals that Divine Love bears rejection without abandoning the desire to gather. The Church that laments like Jesus will be patient in mission. It will weep over cities that resist the Gospel even as it persists in invitation. It will name desolation where it exists while holding the door of hope open with Psalm 118 on its lips.
Formation in hope. Romans 8 teaches that lament, inhabited by the Spirit, matures hope. The Church should teach believers to expect seasons when the Spirit’s intercession takes the form of sighs too deep for words, and to recognize these sighs as holy.
Practicing Biblical Lament
Because the Bible not only permits lament but trains it, a practical pattern may be drawn from our texts.
Address God directly. Begin with “O God,” “My Father,” “Lord Jesus.” Lament is covenantal. Avoid speaking about God in the third person as a substitute for speaking to God in the second person.
Name the pain truthfully. The psalmists do not flinch from the language of Sheol, the pit, or darkness. The Lord Jesus does not shy away from “troubled soul” or “forsaken.” Scripture permits you to speak your sorrow without euphemism.
Appeal to God’s character. Invoke loving-kindness and truth. Remind God, in the way Scripture dares to do, of His steadfast love and faithfulness, of His mighty deeds in ages past.
Assert covenant fidelity where appropriate. Psalm 44 declares, “we have not been false to your covenant.” Where the sorrow is not the fruit of rebellion, say so humbly, refusing simplistic theologies of blame.
Ask the daring questions. “Why?” “How long?” “Will you work wonders for the dead?” Lament is not unbelieving interrogation; it is faith seeking God in the dark.
Plead for deliverance. “Rise up; come to our help!” Be specific. The Bible assumes that asking is part of belonging.
Yield to the Father’s will. Gethsemane is the form of all Christian lament. “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” provides the hinge where plea becomes trust.
Stand in solidarity. Intercede for the broken, local and global. Remember that the Spirit groans the world’s pain within the Church. To practice lament is to share the mind of Christ for the world He loves.
Wait in hope that may feel like darkness. Psalm 88 shows that some prayers end without felt resolution. The absence of resolution is not the absence of God. The canon itself keeps vigil with you.
Rehearse the Resurrection. Though lament does not short-circuit grief, it frames grief within the Paschal horizon. In Christ, “your labor is not in vain” and neither are your tears.
Objections Considered
Some object that lament risks entrenching sorrow rather than healing it. Scripture replies that suppressed sorrow festers, while prayed sorrow is converted into fellowship. Lament is not indulgence; it is obedience to the command to cast all anxieties on God, because He cares.
Others fear that lament dishonors God by questioning His ways. The Bible insists the opposite: genuine awe before the Holy One consists in speaking truthfully to Him with reverent boldness. The prophets, psalmists, and apostles all do so. The Son of God Himself models it. Silence may be advisable for a season, as Ecclesiastes says there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak, yet the Psalter overall enjoins speech that includes complaint, protest, and plea.
Finally, some imagine that lament undercuts witness. Yet the Church that laments is the Church that tells the truth about the world’s condition and about the Cross. The world does not need an airbrushed Gospel; it needs the Gospel of a crucified and risen Lord. To say with Jesus, “Now is my soul troubled,” is to join the world’s ache in hope rather than to deny it.
Concrete Exegesis Returned to the Texts
To return briefly to our primary passages and gather the exegetical threads:
Job shows the innocent sufferer who refuses to falsify God’s justice or his own integrity. The lexicon of rîb and mišpāṭ, the semantic field of tam and yāšār, and the hope condensed in gōʾēl together depict lament as legal appeal and eschatological trust. Job’s friends weaponize theology to end the conversation; Job uses theology to keep it going. The Lord finally vindicates Job’s truthfulness, not the friends’ neat system.
Psalm 44 displays communal lament where fidelity and affliction cohabitate. The psalm’s literary structure, from memory to complaint to petition, is a disciplined pattern for the Church’s prayer. The theology of loving-kindness in verse 26 is decisive. The psalm expects God to be Himself.
Psalm 88 stands as the canonical permission for unresolved prayer. The vocabulary of Sheol and darkness is not a failure of faith but an act of faith that refuses to lie about reality. The rhetorical barrage of “you have” clauses that attribute agency to God acknowledges divine sovereignty without cynicism. In a world of short attention spans, Psalm 88 lengthens the Church’s patience.
Matthew 23:37–39 and Luke 13:34–35 unveil Divine Love grieving over human refusal. The verbs ēthelēsa and ouk ēthelēsate disclose the collision of wills, while aphietai and erēmos pronounce judgment that still holds out a future invocation from Psalm 118. The lament is severe precisely because love has been spurned.
Gethsemane offers the paradigm of obedient lament: petition, filial address, truthful dread, and final yielding. The language of the “cup,” the echo of prophetic imagery of judgment and vocation, and the double thelō of will align the Son’s human will with the Father’s salvific plan.
The Cry of Dereliction brings Psalm 22 into the heart of the Passion. Jesus does not exegete the psalm from a distance; He prays it in extremis. The Greek egkataleipō renders abandonment in a way that preserves both the historical reality of Jesus’ agony and the theological reality of Trinitarian fidelity. The Father does not cease to love the Son; the Son does not cease to trust the Father; nevertheless the Son passes through the felt forsakenness that sin deserves, bearing it away in love.
John 12 situates lament on the threshold of glory. The perfect tense of tetaraktai assures us that the Lord knows the state of a troubled soul. The movement from “save me from this hour” to “for this purpose I have come” to “Father, glorify your name” is the inner choreography of sanctified sorrow.
Romans 8 locates every lament in the triune economy of salvation, where creation groans, the Church groans, and the Spirit groans within the Church. This triune groaning is not a mere description of pain; it is God’s way of drawing history into the freedom of the children of God.
A Word to Those Who Lament
If even Jesus lamented and asked why, then believers should not be surprised to be summoned to the same practice. The pandemic years taught the Church, and continue to teach it, that simplistic explanations do not satisfy the testimony of Scripture or the cries of the faithful. The wisdom of Job, the daring of Psalm 44, the candor of Psalm 88, and the voice of Jesus together instruct us to bring our sorrow into the presence of God, to tell Him the truth about it, to appeal to His loving-kindness, to ask for deliverance, and to remain, with Daniel’s friends, obedient in the “but if not.”
Some seasons of lament will move into doxology within hours or days. Others will be prolonged, with endings on this side of resurrection that feel more like Psalm 88’s final verse than like Psalm 40’s new song. The canon has made provision for both. The Church must do the same.
Lament as Hope’s Honest Language
Lament, as Scripture presents it, is the honest language of hope. It is honest, because it refuses to pretend that death is not an enemy, or that darkness does not descend, or that grief is not searing. It is hopeful, because it assumes that God is there to hear, that God remains who He says He is, and that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ has decisively moved the world’s story toward healing even when our senses tell us otherwise.
To practice lament is to live in the tension between promise and experience, between assurance and agony, between the hidden face and the shining face of God. It is to speak the Bible’s own words back to the Lord, to shelter under the wings of the Savior who longs to gather, to kneel with the Son whose soul was troubled, to keep vigil with the Love who cried “why,” and to yield with Him to the will of the Father. It is to be drawn by the Holy Spirit into the groaning of creation until the day when sighs are translated into songs.
Therefore, let the Church, taught by Job, Psalm 44, Psalm 88, and by Jesus Himself, pray without embarrassment and without fear. Let her say, “Why?” and “How long?” Let her plead, “Awake, Lord.” Let her add, “But if not, we will still not bow.” Let her end, when she can, with “Father, glorify your name.” And when she cannot, let Psalm 88 keep watch on her lips until morning. For the God of loving-kindness has placed lament in the canon not to weaken faith, but to strengthen it for the long fidelity by which He will, in His time, make all things new.
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