Lament, By Nozipho Khanda.

Thanks to my lovely friend Nozi for this beautiful devotional.
“He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; he has broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has made my chains heavy; though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer; he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones; he has made my paths crooked. my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so, I say, “My endurance has perished; so, has my hope from the Lord.”” (Lamentations 3: 4-9, 17-18 ESV)

In the last few months, I have been pondering and reflecting on lament. It’s not often talked about in the church. However, there are many verses and Psalms in the bible that deal with this subject. As we can see from the passage above, there is a whole book dedicated to it called lamentations.

In this scripture, we can see the agony that the writer is facing. Feeling distant from God – punished by him, he has no hope and peace and feels abandoned. I find it comforting that the bible shows me that godly people like Jeremiah the prophet have been through times of lament like me and are able to cry out to God in their distress with no holes barred.

In my times of lament, I have been struck by the fact that we don’t allow ourselves to lament because somehow, we have to be praising God all the time. I have been assailed with feelings of guilt and condemnation when I have felt distressed. There is almost an unspoken rule in the church to pull ourselves together and not deal with our feelings. In my opinion church songs often reflect this as we don’t encourage the singing of lament. We see church as somewhere to give hope and not express our pain.

However, that is not a true reflection of Scripture. Countless times we see God lamenting about his people – wanting them to turn back to him. And we see Jesus lamenting in the garden of Gethsemane.

Such rich language of expressing feelings no matter what we are going through. If God and his son can lament, how can we not? We lament because things are not as they should be here on earth, and because God feels the same things, he laments with us.

So how do we lament? We start by being real with God. He already knows how we are feeling. However, it helps us to say it out loud to him. He loves to hear the honest prayers and cries of his people. I think of little children as they talk to their parents about what’s going on for them. They have no filters and just express themselves using their bodies, their tears, their cries. I believe we can do the same with our Heavenly Father. God in his grace has a way of pulling us out of that dark pit so long as we come to him with our complaints and laments. I think that the danger is when we complain to each other and ourselves leaving him out of the equation.

So, my encouragement is for us all to express our laments to God in song, in art, through our bodies. He welcomes the groaning of his children.