Learning The Lessons Of LamentSample

Today we continue to read Psalm 13. In it, David keeps crying out to God in distress and pain. The light has gone from his eyes and his heart is heavy. He is feeling that the whole world is against him, and that God doesn’t care enough to answer. 

Sometimes lament is the only way to pray. I can’t imagine any other way that prayer is even possible when you watch someone you love die of cancer, when petitions for healing go unanswered, when an innocent child is abused, or murdered, or dies; when your spouse leaves you, when your livelihood is gone, when the pregnancy test is negative again, when you sink into a depression you have no control over…

Ann Weems is a Christian author and poet who lost her son in tragic circumstances the day he turned 21. "The stars fell from the sky," Ann wrote. She felt that she would never find comfort in her monumental loss until a friend suggested that she express her pain and grief by writing her own psalm of lament. And she did. Here is a little of what she wrote:

"O God, what am I going to do? He’s gone, and I’m left. How could you have allowed this to happen? I thought you protected your own! You are the power. Why didn’t you use it? You are the glory. But there is no glory in his death. You are justice and mercy. Yet there was no justice, no mercy for him."

Question: Why do you need to lament? What might help you to do that honestly before God?