It’s that time of year again. As I’m reading through my Bible, I’ve gotten to the book of Lamentations. This is probably my least favorite book in the Bible, especially in years when I’m fighting depression. I’ll be totally honest, there’s been more than one year I skipped it entirely because I just wasn’t in a good place to deal with it.
Grief and mourning are like that. They’re uncomfortable. They eat away at your emotional energy. For forward thinkers like me, they focus too much on the past. There’s this delicate balance between processing the past and looking to the future, and I don’t know many people who have found that balance.
This year, I can’t escape it. Lamentations keeps coming up in sermons, Bible studies, and even conversations with friends. It’s forced me to look deeper into what it means to lament and sit awhile to process my sacred suffering.
The Language of Lament:
There are almost a dozen Hebrew words used in the Old Testament that can be translated into the English word “lament” or “lamentation”, and there are at least three Greek words in the New Testament with similar translations. (Strong’s Concordance) This is just one of the many words or concepts that keep Bible translators up at night.
Each of these words describes a different aspect of mourning and grief. I won’t butcher the Hebrew language in a futile attempt to type these words, but some Hebrew words can mean an elegy, a song of lament, groaning or sighing in mourning, singing a dirge, or wailing which all describe different ways of expressing grief. Other words describe a complaint or meditation of grief, especially towards God. And there are even words that describe the heaviness that comes with grief and the emotional toll of mourning.
The Greeks have two totally different words to serve as the noun (lament) and the verb (to lament). They also had a third word that implies lamenting over something that was cut off or destroyed (mourning over things that were lost).
Reasons for Lament:
Lament goes hand-in-hand with loss. It could be the loss of objects, people, relationships, peace, security, etc. No matter what is lost, losing leads to grief. I will never forget returning to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. It seemed like everyone was grieving the loss of property, the loss of relationships with those who didn’t return, the loss of those who died, and the loss of security. For those of us who lost relatively little, there was survivor’s guilt and the grief that came from wanting to come alongside those who were hurting but not having the resources or emotional strength to do so. As a city, we lamented, we mourned, we grieved.
Sacred Suffering (the space for lament)
In Hebrew, this book isn’t called Lamentations. It’s called “Ekhah” which literally means “How!”. Note that there is no question mark. The writer knew how the nation of Israel came to be in that situation. He knew what led to the destruction. It is an implied rhetorical question expressing the overwhelming grief of the writer retracing the steps that led there. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel spent countless hours, days, weeks, and even years sitting in the quiet contemplating how the people chose their destruction.
As uncomfortable as grief is, it can’t be rushed. Our minds and spirit are designed to revisit those things that cause us grief in some ways like a slow form of torture that can overwhelm us. Sometimes that looks like sitting in silence trying to wrap our minds around how or why things happened. At other times it takes the form of memorials, ceremonies, or sacred monuments dedicated to what we grieve. Whether it’s done in private or as a group, our minds need the space for mourning and grief.
The truth is we need suffering. If I asked any person about a defining moment in their life, a moment when they realized their purpose or calling, it would usually come from a time of suffering. Making space for suffering means making space to hear God. Suffering leads to change. Some people want to change the suffering by treating it. Others open themselves up to being changed by the suffering. They become resilient and find meaning. The difference comes down to attitude. Are you willing to make space for the suffering and let God use it to change you?
Lament As Worship
The prophet Jeremiah is likely the author of the Book of Lamentations, and he also grieved for his lost city…Jerusalem. He wrote Lamentations as a type of poem or song. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and in chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 there are 22 verses each starting with the consecutive letter in the alphabet. Chapter 3 has 66 verses, three for each letter, and it’s right in the middle of chapter 3 where Jeremiah shifts his focus from all the things he is mourning to say:
“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I will say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” Lamentations 3: 21-26
It’s difficult to see lament as a form of worship, yet there it is tucked in the middle of the book. Because the Lord is faithful… (fill in the blank). Sometimes that blank is filled with seemingly little things like “I will get out of bed tomorrow” or “I will spend time in prayer”. At other times that blank is filled with big things like “I will start this ministry / job / school”, “I will foster this child”, “I will marry this person”, or “I will make this sacrifice”. For the writer of Lamentations, it was simply “I will wait for Him.” This week I’ve been challenged to fill in that blank as I’ve processed some of my own suffering. I hope everyone who reads this will do the same.
