Suffering With HopeMuestra

Longing and Lament 

Lament helps keep us sane amid physical suffering; it allows us to acknowledge real problems even as we hold out for the unrealized resolution. It affirms God’s shalom even as it confesses our present trouble. As we wonder what it means to look to God amid our suffering, the only way we might keep our hope is to keep this larger, complex story of humanity in mind. Powerful, inventive, and delightful creatures that we can be, we also suffer and complain. We are never far from the dueling experiences of splendor and pain, triumph and tragedy. Lament allows us to embrace this tension without being swallowed up by it. It enables us to look for God’s deliverance even as the sandstorm of life threatens and swirls.

We will only discover hope when we are ruthlessly honest about what lies between us and that hope. At least such truth telling is required if we are ever to know the true hope of the ancient Christian confession. The church denies the power of the gospel when it trivializes grief and belittles physical pain, over spiritualizing our existence in such a way as to make a mockery of the Creator Lord. Faithfulness to the gospel requires the Christian community to deal with the messiness of human grief. Biblical faith is not meant to provide an escape from our physical pain or to belittle the darkness of depression and death, but rather invites us to discover hope and grace amid our struggle.

To be a truly human story—which is the only way we should understand the Christian story—means it must confess both grief and hope, sin and faithfulness, struggle and promise. We must learn to be truly honest with ourselves, with others, and even with God. Our theology requires it. Our stories demand it. Only with this kind of confession and lament are we finally in a position to capture a glimpse of the God who is, rather than the god we imagine him to be. Only then can we discover the scandalous grace of God so often spoken about, but so seldom truly savored.

From Embodied Hope by Kelly M. Kapic.