“Lament is how we bring our sorrow to God…. We need to recover the practice of honest spiritual struggle that gives us permission to vocalize our pain and wrestle with our sorrow …. moving us toward deeper worship and trust.”
– Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy
Pain that is incredibly overwhelming. Devastating.
Since 1969, thanks to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, we have been told that there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Others have explained that these stages don’t necessarily fall into well-defined periods of time, but that a grieving person will often traverse the stages repeatedly. It would be so much easier if one knew that, okay, I’ll do stage one for a month, then stage two, etc. It doesn’t work that way. The stages are more like an undesirable carnival ride that twists us this way and that way and back again.
When grief hits – often unexpectedly even after a loved one’s long illness – there is a constant question of “What should I do? How do I manage this?” and even “Can I possibly go on living when I am in such pain?”
While these stages pop up throughout Scripture – in the lives of Job, David, Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus too – the notion that we go through all of them, in that order, isn’t biblical. So, what then does God teach us about grief in His Word?
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18
I’m using the word “lament” here to describe the process that the Lord has given to us to give voice to our pain. It is a process that only Christians can practice because only those with a connection with God can do it. It’s a process that takes us from asking, “Why, God?” to once again experiencing trust in Him. For example, consider the transition from the beginning of Psalm 13…
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
… to the end in verse 6:
I will sing to the LORD
for He has dealt bountifully with me.
And compare the despair at the beginning of Psalm 69…
Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying out;
my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dimwith waiting for my God.
… with what comes near the conclusion:
I will praise the name of God with a song;
I will magnify him with thanksgiving . . .
For the LORD hears the needy
and does not despise his own people who are prisoners.
When we are grieving, sometimes others will encourage us to hurry away from verse 1 and jump to the end of the Psalm. There’s a discomfort with being caught in the middle area because it doesn’t seem godly or correct to stay in the questioning zone for very long. Doubting could leave your “spiritual status” at stake.
And yet, God gave us the Psalms – one-third of which include lament – and the Book of Job and Lamentations so that we might have the words with which to approach Him when we are devastated and destitute of motivation.
Without lamenting to bring our sorrow to God, we may not know how to process the extreme pain, and might therefore fall into silence, bitterness, or even anger.
Showing others the process of lament is a way that we can help other Christians progress through their difficult loss. It’s superior to offering trite solutions, unhelpful comments, or impatient responses. Lament helps us learn about God and our world.
How then do you lament?
Biblical lament takes grieving people on a journey and usually includes four key elements:
- an address to God
- a complaint
- a request
- and an expression of trust and/or praise
Each step is a pathway towards hope. As Mark Vroegop writes, “Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness.”
Step 1) Turn to God
Keep praying, despite your pain, because of your pain. Pray out the words of a psalm, like Psalm 77 for example:
I cry aloud to God
and He will hear me.
In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord;
in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
my soul refuses to be comforted.
Pray the whole Psalm. It takes faith to pray a lament and some people are afraid to do so because of its honesty. But it is so much better than living in silent despair.
We have a tendency to think that God will answer immediately – whoosh! Here comes instant comfort. It doesn’t always happen that way. Mark Vroegop explains:
“Lament is the song you sing believing that one day God will answer and restore. Lament invites us to pray through our struggle with a life that is far from perfect.”
Step 2) Complain
Prayer is a proper place to do so! Pray your struggles and your honest, humble, pain-filled questions. The Psalms contain “creative complaining” – mentioning sorrow, fear, frustration and confusion, and then reminding God of His promises to us.
We believe in God’s sovereignty but live in a world full of tragedy. When overcome by grief, we may feel like God is far away from us, such as is expressed in Ps. 13:1-2; Ps. 22:1; Ps. 35:17; Ps. 44:23-24; Ps. 80:12; and Ps. 88:14. Complaining to God is not just listing our grievances – it is a path that reorients our thinking and our feelings. And think about it – when we are on a path, we are not yet at our destination.
Step 3) Request
If you don’t have the words, read a Psalm of lament, such as Psalm 77, out loud. Think about it. Let it open your heart. Keep wrestling and struggling. The Psalms give us permission and encouragement to present our struggles to our Almighty loving Father. David makes bold requests despite his deep pain, his questions and his frustrations, anchoring his soul to who God is and what He has done. We must stake our claim on what God has promised that He will do!
Step 4) Express trust
Look at the difference between Psalm 22:2…
Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.
…and see the word “yet” and so much more in verses 3-5:
Yet you are holy….
…. trusted
…. delivered
…. cried
…. rescued
Psalm 31 starts the turnaround with the word “but”:
But I trust in you, O LORD;
I say, ‘You are my God.’
Lament is a place where we continually acknowledge our need for God’s help. When we pray the Psalm all the way through, God can use it to soften our grief and remind us of His love. In the deepest grief, it might not happen all at once, but gradually.
Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs
Along with the Scriptures of lament, hymns and songs can often aid us in expressing our deepest emotions and moving us towards trusting God.
For example, the hymn of Georg Neumark entitled “If You But Let the Father Guide You” is an intense and wonderful reminder that we may and must move from our sorrow/distress to once again trusting God.
If you but let the Father guide you,
relying on his faithfulness,
He will be evermore beside you
in all your sorrow and distress.
He who on God Most High depends
builds not his house on shifting sands.
Will anxious care or bitter sighing
at any time give true relief?
And what avails us our decrying
each morning’s evil, trouble, grief?
We only add to grief and stress
by discontent and bitterness.
But we must not think that stanza 2 means that we are not to ever sigh, decry, feel discontent, or bitter. It does not mean that we will climb out of the pits of despair immediately. It is an encouragement to trust God. And when we lament – we move down the path from devastation and questioning to assurance.
Lament, Vroegop writes,
“allows you to hear the lessons God intends to teach you through pain…. It complains, weeps, struggles, hopes, remembers and clings. It reminds us who we are, who God is, and how brokenness is woven into the fabric of our world…. Lament can retune our hearts to what’s really important.”
When should we lament?
We will all suffer grief while we are in this world. It may be the terrible loss of a loved one, the loss of our possessions or employment, or some kind of humiliation or attack. But we can also use the Psalms of lament to pray about all the horrors in this world. War. Death. Poverty. Trafficking. How often we shake our heads in disbelief or feel at a total loss to change anything! Praying the Psalms of lament over the evil in our world will express our emotions and our concerns, while having us end with an affirmation that God is indeed in control.
Learning to lament using the Psalms and Lamentations and other Scriptures will help us. Pray them out loud. Write them in a notebook. Let God use the words He has provided to us to push us down the path from hopelessness to certainty.
Sharon Bratcher recently suffered the loss of her oldest daughter Julie. You can read other RP articles she has written in her book entitled “Life and Breath and Everything” available on Amazon.