How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
(Psalms 13)
A psalm of lament.
Our society does not do grief well. We either stuff it and suffer from the depression that causes, or let it burst out in anger, or sit on it and watch bubble out in sarcasm, or ferment into resentment. We “put on a happy face” and lie about the sadness inside, burdening ourselves with guilt about lying and shame over being sad.
God provides us with another option: lament.
To lament is to express sorrow, angst, grief, frustration, or despair, often in poetry or song. Somehow we have lost the ability to lament. We want to skip over that part of life, many times because we don’t know what to do with it. We feel helpless, out of control, weak. Our fallen nature does not like having those feelings, but our souls, our minds, even our bodies need to express a response to loss and pain. Without it, we get sick!
Our gracious God not only gives us a outlet for these feelings, He feels them right along with us. He invites us to share them with Him, not sanitized but raw and unfiltered. (Politeness or “political correctness” is not a high value to Him!) He already knows everything we are thinking and feeling, and is neither overwhelmed nor offended by it!
God’s preferred songbook contains more of this type of song than any other!
Does that give you a clue about whether this is important to Him?
Maybe you are not aware of having enemies. Maybe you are not feeling the impending doom of death. Maybe you are constantly seeing the glorious face of God beaming in your direction. In that case, awesome! Put on your dancing shoes!
But… if there in sadness, oppression, loss, fear or anxiety in your life, look for one of the laments in God’s songbook, read, chant or sing it out loud and pass the tissues! Healing is on its way!
So thankful for permission to feel as I am
Following Jesus every day in the everyday,
Christi
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