Lamenting

Nothing makes much sense right now.

I started reading the book of Lamentation.

Confession: I am pretty sure I have never read it all the way through before. I have thought about lament as
an important form of communal and personal prayer. I know that God actually invites us to pour out our anguish and our complaints and that a significant number of the Psalms are Psalms of lamentation.


You know things aren't going well in your life when the Psalms of lament or the book of Lamentations feel prescient.

And yet, here we are at Lamentation's opening salvo:

How deserted lies the city,
once so full of people!
How like a widow is she,
who once was great among the nations!

So let's be honest one inadequate comfort that I received from reading Lamentations is that things could be worse.

I know people personally who have fled war and scenes like the writer describes: with children starving, people
displaced, bodies dead in the street.

And yet, as a friend recently posted you can drown as readily in a foot of water as 30 feet. There is no reason to downplay our personal experiences as we fear for our aged, our children, and their futures, and ourselves as we lose income and a full scope of movement.

There is plenty of trouble to drown within.

Moreover, God never issued forth valedictions forbidding mourning. Scripture does not preach stoicism or a stiff upper lip.

God is the friend who let's you cry it out in their presence without rushing to say "there, there, everything is going to be okay."

Or as the writer of Lamentations puts it:

Arise, cry out in the night,
as the watches of the night begin;
pour out your heart like water
in the presence of the Lord.


The writers of Hebrew Scripture are especially unflinching in their insistence that the world is a place filled with an almost overwhelming amount of sorrow. Moments of prosperity and joy are not things that human beings can cling to.

Why?

Well in part because of human sinfulness and this is where lamentations are especially suitable for Lent. Human sinfulness is constantly destroying human community and prosperity.

I know we don't like to talk about sin, but how else can we describe members of congress quickly selling off their stocks and buying shares in online meeting platforms?

How else do we describe the arrogance that saw what was happening in China and didn't think it could come to our shores?

How else do we describe the people partying on the beaches even as they are told that they are putting other people's lives in mortal danger?

How else do we describe years and years of tax cuts for the wealthiest and most powerful that have left any semblance of a social safety net frayed?

How else do we describe the hoarding of necessary supplies?

How else do we describe the arrogance of public officials that ignored doctors?

And yet, there is also the part that seems to rest on no one's shoulders but God's: the deadly pathogens and the strange biology that has made this virus both deadly and contagious.

Why, Oh God?


Why are you so far from us?

Why have you allowed this calamity fall on us?
Why do the rich prosper and hoard while others suffer?
Who will care for those without homes?
Who will care for the Prisoners? What will we do when there aren't enough ventilators?
How will anything ever be good again?


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There is always these strange moments of whiplash in the Psalms of lament. Where all of sudden the writer pulls out of their torrent of anguished cries, invectives, and rage against God to express a moment of startling assurance. These always seem too abrupt. Are these forced? Did some later editor come through and feel like these texts needed to be cleaned up? What to make of these? And yet, I think this is how comfort finds us in difficult times. God enters in--if but a moment--powerfully--reminding us that we are loved.

The words of assurance from Lamentations is one of my favorites.


Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.


A song containing the first line was on almost endless repeat on my spotify list this past January:


Have no fear for your life
Turn your cheek, turn your cheek
Bear the yoke of love and death
The Lord will give all life and breath

Because of His great Love
We are not overcome
Because of His great Love
We are not overcome


May these words seep into your soul this morning--and mine--we are loved, we will not be consumed.