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Weep With Me

Psalm 22

Sometimes I like to imagine King David pitching his song ideas to a Christian record label in Nashville or LA.

He presses play and the speakers come alive with his demos - “These are just roughs - they still need a little polish.”

Executives in sharply tailored suits nod along and tap their feet to “The Heavens declare the Glory of God”. 

They can already hear “His love endures forever” being sung at conferences and in churches across the globe.

They almost lose their professional cool altogether and just start high-fiving across the desk when they hear “The Lord is my Shepherd” - definite first single.

However, from this point, things begin to fall apart. 

“Uh…what was that lyric, Dave?”

“That one? 'My God, My God why have you forsaken me.'”

“Huh… have you got anything else for us?”

They get about 10 seconds into “Will you forget me forever?” before it becomes clear that its not a hit with the label.

“Any other ideas?”

“Well I have this one I’ve been working on - “Break the teeth in their mouths O God” …or “Make them vanish like a stillborn child.”

“Yeah…eh…cool -gosh is that the time? We’ll be in touch. But don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

The funny thing is that these songs of lament, that would probably fail to impress the Christian music industry, have been sung, prayed and clung to like a life raft by believers for thousands of years.

Isn’t it strange that a lot of the lyrics from the hymnbook at the centre of our Bibles - the Psalms - would be so out of place in Sunday morning worship or on Christian radio?

Don’t get me wrong, I think we have a God who is absolutely worth celebrating - it makes sense that we sing a lot of incredibly positive songs. Rend Collective, a little embarrassingly, has 5 songs so far with joy in the title. The gospel is good news after all.

The problem isn’t positivity: the problem is when we sacrifice honesty for the sake of positivity.

Maybe you’ve been in that terrible position, where you’ve received THAT phone call, and a curtain of grief drops like a scene change at the theatre and you know that life is never going to be the same again.

If you’ve been there you probably know what it’s like to stand in church and just not be able to sing. Not because you don’t believe, but because the words just seem hollow.

This is why we need songs of lament: they give us a song to sing in the shadows.

In the rawness of our pain we need the rawness of the psalms.

There is nothing wrong with wrestling with God.

To wrestle is a form of intimacy - it’s the opposite of running away. 

To wrestle is to choose to engage even when it’s hard. 

And rest assured that your God is strong enough to handle anything you can throw at him - He’s heard it all before.

He’s even PRAYED it all before. Jesus quoted a Psalm of heart-wrenching lament from the cross - “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

That is all the permission you will ever need to be direct and vulnerable with God.

So maybe you’re going through something unspeakably horrible and it has been keeping your soul silent: my challenge to you today is to just open your mouth and tell Him how much you’re hurting.

You don’t have to wait until you can say something nice or something “holy”.

Just begin the conversation. Just sing something out.

Join the long-standing, ancient tradition of the psalmists and raise your lament - it may well be the beginning of your healing.

To continue your worship experience and listen to "Weep With Me" on The Overflow Christian music service, please visit https://oflow.it/M5GGZBcZVK