God In Our Loss
Elaine Poproski Download: Audio
Sunday Scripture Reading: Lamentations 3:1-41 (NRSV)
1 I am one who has seen affliction
under the rod of God’s[a] wrath;
2 he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
3 against me alone he turns his hand,
again and again, all day long.
Looking to Sunday: Preparing to Hear from God
by Elaine Poproski
I love the psalms of lament. I love them because of their beautiful, dramatic imagery. I love their honesty and vulnerability. I love their passion. And I love that their writers are willing to say anything to God. Consider, for example, the opening words of Psalm 22: My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? We know from all through Scripture that God does not ever forsake us. And yet, this is the psalmist’s experience. The writer feels forsaken, alone, abandoned, and forgotten. The psalmist isn’t ashamed or embarrassed to express the feeling of forsakenness. This isn’t the time to correct bad theology. It’s a time to let fly all the words and all the feelings of sorrow, hurt, loss, and hardship. There will be time later for the correctives, for the reframing of these feelings, but for now it is enough to speak the words and know that they are heard. I love that God can handle our feelings, even when they’re improper or impolite. I love that God is compassionate to the point that He receives our complaints with grace; that our honest expressions don’t frighten Him or drive Him away.
Lament isn’t limited to the psalms. It’s a genre scattered throughout the Bible. There’s a whole book in the Old Testament that’s so completely about lament it’s in the name: Lamentations. It speaks the words of sadness, hopelessness, and suffering of a people who’ve lost everything and who are longing for God to intervene. But that’s not all we find in the book of Lamentations, or in the psalms of lament, for that matter. If all we had were the words of lament, there’d be very little to love in these passages of Scripture. But these laments are always resolved with words of faith. Consider our Scripture reading for this coming Sunday. It’s Lamentations 3. After pouring out deep sorrow and loss, we get to verses 21-23 which read, “BUT this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.” Lament is beautiful and powerful, but lament that is resolved by words of faith is far more beautiful and immeasurably more powerful.
As you prepare for Sunday, I invite you to spend some time with the psalms of Lament. Try reading any of the following: Psalm 3, 4, 5, 7, 22, 25, 26, 41, 53, and 77. There are a lot more. Can you find others? As you read, focus on the words of faith that resolve the lament. And if you’re feeling particularly creative, why not try writing your own psalm of lament? Write about something in your own life or perhaps about the looming loss of our church building. Allow the honesty and vulnerability of the psalmists to guide your own word choices. And then, once you’ve written the lament, see if you can also write the words of faith that will resolve that lament.