Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our belly clings to the ground.
Rise up; come to our help!
Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love! | Psalm
44:23–26
I love the Psalms. I love the fact that the self-revelation that God has given us includes these songs of human emotion to God. In the Psalms, God shows us what it is like to be creation, reaching out to the Creator. There are royal Psalms and Psalms of wisdom. There are Psalms written in times of praise, thanksgiving, and lament. It is this last type that most clearly marks our current moment. These Psalms are directed to God in times of trouble and despair, calling out to He who has the power to do something about it. These are not merely attempts to move God’s hand, they are a recognition of our own weakness and fragility. Prayers of lament flow out of us when we find ourselves most unable and the times uncertain. NT Wright wrote had an article published yesterday that pointed to the Psalms of lament as the proper response for Christians at this time. He defines lament as:
what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer.
By this definition, lament is an exercise in mystery; recognition that we do not have answers. Wright adds to this, saying:
What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot recognized in the early 1940s, when the only advice is to wait without hope, because we’d be hoping for the wrong thing?
Lament is living in the uncertainty, not trying to move on too quickly to easy fixes and quick answers. In this, I believe Wright is pointing us to A truth of the Christian life: we often have to embrace not knowing. Becoming a Christian does not make sense of everything and give us our best life now. Lament reminds us of the limitations of life and is an important exercise in humility.
Lament is certainly more than this, and I believe that, in his article, Wright misses how God uses lament over and over again throughout the Old Testament. Lament is not simply a tool to embrace our humanity, but a tool that God uses to draw His people to Himself (great article on THIS). Crying out to God allows us to see truth what we miss when we believe that we are the saviors; that redemption is in our hands.
Lament is certainly bringing our questions to God, and it is certainly not receiving the answers we are looking for. Lament should open our eyes to the the answers God has already given. Lament is a means to grow our trust and dependence on God; it is where we recognize that God is not like us and find peace and hope in this holiness. One of the great Biblical examples of this is the story of Job.
In the book of Job, the main character suffers through all sorts of terrible things, and laments continually. He asks all sorts of questions of God. When God answers Job, He does not do it by giving Job the kinds of answers that Job was seeking. Instead, through 4 chapters, God declares His glory to Job. He doesn’t make sense of the struggle, but to say: I am God. From this answer, Job declares:
I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
‘Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.’
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.” | Job 42:2–6
Job finds peace in a God who can do all things and whose purposes can not be thwarted, even as Job is reminded that he doesn’t fully understand these purposes. His comfort and hope are in the fact that there is a purpose that he can’t understand. GK Chesterton references this:
Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say, ‘I do not understand,’ it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat ‘You do not understand.’ And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding.
GK Chesterton, The Everlasting Mind
Lament is there for us to recognize that things are not as they should be, but also that there is a way they should be. Lament allows us to imagine a hope that is greater than our understanding. In times of uncertainty, that is what we need. This is not a time to embrace the unknown, but to put more weight on a God who does not change. Lament is a means for us to trust in Him more, as we recognize that so many of the things we have put our hope in have failed us.