Here’s a couple of profoundly simple thoughts:
life is not always fair, and life is unpredictable
in spite of our efforts to make it so.
We yearn for order; we get chaos. We codify human
behavior; we turn rebellious. We try to manage
time; we find it’s too soon passing. We assume
we’ll be healthy; we encounter illness. We
trust materialism to fulfill us; we discover it’s
all easily lost.
Not a very upbeat state of this world’s existence,
is it?
Ken Cope sees it like this:
We live in a fallen world, full of disappointment
and loss, and we often feel empty and unfulfilled
and incredibly alone. But while God is not there
to fix our problems and make the pain go away,
he is always walking beside us. In the ongoing
journey of life, we are given the opportunity
to know God and ourselves through the process
of lamenting and grieving. (from the book A Sacred
Sorrow by Michael Card)
Lamenting and grieving? Is that allowed in 21st
Century America? Is that biblical? Is it spiritually
permissible?
It may be counter-cultural, even in some churches,
but lamenting is truly biblical. Bible readers
find that faithful followers of Yahweh all encountered
seasons of distress. And more than a few of them
openly, verbally, took their distresses and disgusts
right to the ears of their God.
They knew, they loved, they trusted in a God who
was not immobile, not impotent, not distant. They
knew God as one knows an actual loving parent,
one open to all expressions: praise and dismay,
thanksgiving and frustration.
And they are called faithful.
So when life crashes in on us, when dreams shatter
into shards, when the doctor delivers startling
news, when the house is destroyed by fire, when
the stable job is lost, when the friend becomes
an enemy, when lack of control depresses our spirits,
when the world is overrun with evil: be faithful.
Go to the Psalms, particularly the questioning
ones, the laments not read in Sunday morning worship
services.
Find a trusted, faithful companion. Pray with
brutal honesty. Unload the burden, with all its
ugly sentiments. There is hope to be found in
voiced despair.
And know, truly know, that our God is one who
will always live up to this promise: I will never
leave you nor forsake you.
—Virgil Fry
