Recently, I’ve been dwelling in my new favorite portion of the Bible: Lamentations.
It’s five poetic chapters of the most raw, unfiltered, uncompromisingly honest lament (hence the title) that you’ve ever read.
Lament, because the Israelite people (from thousands of years ago) have just had their capital, Jerusalem, destroyed and they have been carried off into exile to live as foreigners. The splendor of their past has been demolished. The dreams of future glory are gone. All is dust and misery and extreme suffering.
And they blame God.
If you read the first 18 or so verses of chapter three, the author absolutely lets God have it with a sort of “reverent profanity.”
Let me hit you with the highlights: “[God] has brought me into darkness without any light.”
“Though I call and cry for help, [God] shuts out my prayer.”
“[God] is like a bear lying in wait for me … He led me off my way and tore me to pieces.”
Did you know this was in the Bible?! It almost feels dirty. Wrong, somehow. Say things like this and you’d better expect the lightning to strike at any moment.
You’d think this was God’s enemies talking like this, but this is God’s own people saying this about Him!
This is why I like Lamentations so much. Because it’s as if God is giving His people permission to be human, even when that humanity veers toward the hurt, the inconsolable, or the downright angry.
God wants them to know that in the darkest and most difficult parts of their lives, they do not have to suffer in silence. Even if that means it’s Him they turn their ire against.
We don’t always know what to do in those difficult parts of life. And if we think we’re not “allowed” to say something honest to God about our pain, we might very well decide to keep our distance from God altogether.
Which is why Lamentations is God’s gift to us. We not only have permission to voice our suffering, but it’s biblical!
God gives us biblical lament in order to protest against our situation, to process our emotions, to proclaim our confusion. Mostly, though, God’s gift of lament gives dignity to the hardships we experience as humans.
Which is all God ever expected us to be in the first place. Human. We don’t have to go through hardship and act like it doesn’t hurt. It’s not virtuous to agonize in voiceless isolation. We need to be able to say what we think, what we feel, what we experience, especially to the One whom we proclaim has a steadfast love for us!
Granted, becoming conversant in the biblical language of lament may take practice, especially if, like me, it can feel a bit irreverent at times.
Maybe what Lamentations is trying to teach us, though, is that the true irreverence would be thinking that God prefers to hear our pious, insincere praise than our honest lament. Even if it happens to be profane.
Joshua Gorenflo and his wife, Kya, are ministers at Kenai Fellowship, Mile 8.5 on the Kenai Spur Highway. Worship is 11 a.m. on Sundays. Streamed live at kenaifellowship.com.
