Learning to Lament: A 5-Day DevotionalSample

Living with Lament: Making Lament Personal

By reading the Scriptures through the lens of lament, you’ll begin to discover the variety of circumstances and personalities that are a vital part of this historical song of sorrow. This lament awakening will not only allow you to read the Bible more thoughtfully but also show you the wide-ranging expressions of sorrow-filled prayers that could be your own or the means of helping a hurting friend. You’ll learn how this prayer language has served the people of God through the centuries, and how it could be the language for any season in your life or the life of someone close to you.

Regardless of what is causing you sorrow, let me encourage you to keep lamenting. Keep turning to God in prayer. Keep complaining. Keep asking. Keep trusting. In the same way that working a muscle trains it to carry greater weight, the spiritual exercise in lament prepares us for future hardship.

Lament not only gives voice to our struggles. By entering into it, we also discover there are lessons to be learned. Lament tunes our heart to truths undergirding our lives and the world in which we live. 

Learn more about Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament  by Mark Vroegop (Crossway, 2019).