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When we are bewildered by our distant, unseeable God, we don't turn away; we live into the tension that even though we are afflicted and feeling forsaken, our gracious and merciful God is still our God. It dismembers our doubt, because we can honestly express it.
In lament, we find language that boldly comes before God and trusts him to show his face. To cover us and guide us and ransom us. To fight our enemies and restore the barren places. In lament, we acknowledge we are powerless to fix it. But we call on the character of a good God.
We cry out from hospital beds and makeshift isolation wards, from nursing homes and prison cells. We cry out in empty grocery aisles and unemployment lines, over unattended grave sites and ramshackle shelters, from the front lines and the back of the line, for the least of these.
We cry out after test results and making the side of a bed that will never be slept in again. Lament is subversive, always lifting from the breasts of the suffering; it's born in pain. Our tongues swollen with agony. It is the untamed cry of our hearts. The truth of our witness.
It is an indictment against the US church that we've failed so spectacularly in teaching and modeling lament. If we're to survive with an ounce of our faith intact, we must be a people who learn to lament. Suffering isn't just coming, it's here. -adapted from Glorious Weakness
