When the World Feels Heavy, We Have Lament
These days feel heavier and more unsettling by the moment. Many of us wake up already carrying a knot in our guts, scroll the headlines with a sense of dread, and move through our days bearing the weight of a country—and a world—that feels increasingly unraveling from love, peace, and justice.
Every week I face the people of my church who I know are coming with this dread in their guts. I know their souls. I see their social media posts. And I’m supposed to give them some sort of hope and wisdom. As my gut is in knots too.
I find myself saying often, “We need to allow ourselves time to grieve before we speak. Lament is our way through.” This is my best answer.
At my church we created this definition of lament from our conversations:
Let’s break that down…so you can have some hope too.
It is not intuitive to lean into pain. But by acknowledging the brokenness around us, we become more like our heavenly Father. As we ask God in prayer to mend, heal, and restore, we watch God work and learn to love what he loves and to see what he sees.
In lament we learn that it is okay to lay out our questions before our compassionate Father who holds all things. We learn to look also to Jesus who weeps with us. God isn’t cruel. Because the cruel doesn’t weep with the hurting. We discover that the Holy Spirit comforts us and gives us godly wisdom in real time.
What is the difference from complaining and lamenting?
Complaint has to do with entitlement. Lament is more an emotional response to what is going on. (Ugh, we don’t like our emotions, do we?)
Lament is calling upon God to be consistent to his character and promises. Complaint is, “I don’t like what you are doing, God.”
Complaint is horizontal. Lament is vertical.
Lament can sound like complaining. The motivation is different. Lament is about getting through it.
Complaining doesn’t seem to have a purpose. Lament has purpose.
What is the purpose of complaining? Who does it serve? It is purely emotional. Not intellectual. Just reacting. Complaining can also be passive/aggressive looking for your own way.
We feel complaining but lament breaks our heart.
Lament is intellectual. You are seeking for the purpose.
Lament is you are anticipating a response to make things better. Complaining is sometimes just to hear yourself fuss (that does feel better, temporarily).
We complain to hear ourselves fuss so we feel heard or empowered. Lament is leaving the power with God. Complaining is keeping the power. Lament is giving the power to God.
Giving it over to God’s way says we trust God with the outcome. You can whine in lament as you turn it over to God. This leads you from no hope to hope which does lead to trust in God.
Complaining is heard by the masses. Lament is to be heard before God.
Verbal processing is not complaining. We need to verbally process, we need to lament, we need to put words to our emotions. Lament gives us a way to verbally process with hope that leads to trust. Emotions are tunnels, we need to complete the process. Verbally processing is part of going through the tunnel. People are a part of the process too. We lament with people.
The process is something you learn after a few heartbreaks. I can trust God with more now because I’ve learned, through past processes, that God is faithful. People matter here again because hearing other people’s stories also helps me learn to trust the process.
Singing songs about the process helps. Those words we sing–together–gives us words for those emotions we feel and don’t know how to verbalize. Singing those words are a part of lament. Singing is always better with people.
This pain is a beginning or this pain is a door to distrusting God. Lamenting is giving pain a beginning.
Our world needs more beauty like this. Lamenting is beautiful Sometimes it is that ugly beautiful.
So how does lament bring us hope?
Processing pain brings hope. Romans 5:3-5 is the process of pain is our beginning and it ends in hope.
Singing laments brings hope.
Lament in community brings hope. Sharing pain with others is harder, and that’s why we tend to avoid it—but it’s often where we see God at work most clearly, moving through the people around us. Even if there isn’t a solution, people help shoulder the burden.
Why should lament be a part of the life of the church?
We represent Jesus to the world.
Jesus’ heart breaks over injustice so we bring that Jesus to our church experience.
Those worshiping beside me have experienced, or are still experiencing, injustice, and in the church they should have the opportunity to be seen and acknowledged.
God cannot be a God of Love without being a God of Justice also. God of Justice belongs in church too. Where is God in the injustice? The Church must answer for that too.
A church that ignores injustice misses the heart of God.
Together we represent God and diffuse the build-up of hurt and anger that we might needlessly carry. When we lament together remember that God does promise to make every injustice right, every pain will be healed. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever. Revelation 21:4. (Though in my prayers I wish it to be tomorrow, read also Do Prayers Change Anything in This Unjust World?)
In lament, remembering covenant is important—to remember God’s promises and to remember that God is paying attention to us. We are reclaiming our relationship with God, even when we think God has abandoned us. We are telling God that we trust him. Sometimes our lament sounds insecure, but we are still saying it out loud.
A thinking error is believing we can’t have such innocent joy moments with so much death and pain happening in such big ways. But we can. We can feel the grief and the gratitude. Lament has space for both.
“There is good reason why the eight human emotions—guilt, shame, loneliness, fear, anger, sadness, hurt, and gladness—include seven for the purpose of expressing grief and protest over how things are not what they’re meant to be.” — Dr. Dan B. Allender, The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God
These seven grief-stricken emotions are part of how God equips us to show up fully in a tragic world. Emotions move us towards God, all of them. We get to show up. How brave of us. The world needs the heartbreak we risk.
Lament is a sacred part of our faith. It is the language the Bible gives us when the world is not as it should be and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. That sounds about as messy as my faith actually is.
Jeremiah 8:21 – I hurt with the hurt of my people. I mourn and am overcome with grief. (NLT)
Jeremiah 8:21 – Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. (NIV)
I know maybe these words don’t take away that knot in your gut today. Still try. This is trying something holy. This is processing and turning it over to the God of Justice who can do more than you can do.
