Day 22
Week 4, Day 22: Embracing Lament as we Pray for Breakthrough: “How long, O Lord?”
Psalm 90:13
“Return, O Lord! How long? Have pity on your servants!”
Psalm 94:3
“O Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult?”
Think about your favorite worship songs. Odds are celebration sits at the heart of most, if not all, your favorite worship songs. Most modern worship songs in the American church extol the greatness of God, the power of the cross, the closeness of the Spirit, and other praiseworthy themes pertaining to our Triune God. Few worship songs, however, join the chorus of lament that resounds throughout the pages of Scripture.
Why? One honest answer would be that the American ethos of comfort and security privileges songs that feed a culture of celebration rather than embraces the discomfort, even the disruption, of biblical lament.
In his commentary on the biblical book of Lamentations, a five-chapter poetic lament on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, Christian theologian Soong-Chan Rah makes a sobering diagnosis about the American church’s relationship to lament and the inevitable consequences:
“The American church avoids lament. The power of lament is minimized and the underlying narrative of suffering that requires lament is lost. But absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart forget. The absence of lament in the liturgy of the American church results in the loss of memory. We forget the necessity of lamenting over suffering and pain. We forget the reality of suffering and pain” (Prophetic Lament, 2015, p. 22).
What is biblical lament, and what does it do that’s so vital to the church?
Biblical lament is the expression of pain, bewilderment, or dissatisfaction at the conditions of life. In the Bible, humans can lament to each other, as when Job and the psalmist lament to their critics and mockers, “How long will you keep treating me with such disdain?” (Job 19:2; Ps 42).
But most often, biblical lament is directed toward God. Cries of “how long?” and “why?” animate the communal and individual psalms, which occupy about 40% of the book of Psalms.
Of course, other expressions articulate the depths of biblical lament, but if we focused only on the passages that dare to ask God “how long” and “why,” we discover that lament takes two common forms: repentance and a call for justice.
Many times, whether individual or communal, biblical lament is an act of repentance. It confesses sin, voices the pain of sin’s consequences, and asks God how long the pain must endure:
Psalm 90:7–13
Confession
7 For we are brought to an end by your anger;
by your wrath we are dismayed.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
Pain
9 For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
10 The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
11 Who considers the power of your anger,
and your wrath according to the fear of you?
How long?
12 So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
13 Return, O Lord! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
Here, the psalmist refuses to minimize the pain of affliction. He unequivocally tells God, “This pain comes from your hand, and it hurts.” But the psalmist joins pain with sobering honesty: “My sins are before you.” The psalmist connects his sin with his pain, acknowledging cause and effect. But then he transitions to request: don’t let this pain go to waste, so teach me wisdom, tell me this pain will end, and grant me mercy.
Even the angel of Yhwh laments on behalf of God’s people experiencing his correction:
Zechariah 1:12
12 Then the angel of the Lord said, “O Lord of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you have been angry these seventy years?”
By enshrining lament as repentance in Scripture, the Spirit invites us to absorb the pattern of confession, pain, and petition into our own rhythms of prayer, so that we may be holy as God is holy.
At other times, biblical lament becomes a call for justice, a call for God to right the wrongs of this world, to bring evil to account:
Psalm 94:1–7
1 O Lord, God of vengeance,
O God of vengeance, shine forth!
2 Rise up, O judge of the earth;
repay to the proud what they deserve!
3 O Lord, how long shall the wicked,
how long shall the wicked exult?
4 They pour out their arrogant words;
all the evildoers boast.
5 They crush your people, O Lord,
and afflict your heritage.
6 They kill the widow and the sojourner,
and murder the fatherless;
7 and they say, “The Lord does not see;
the God of Jacob does not perceive.”
Psalm 97 laments the Babylonian invasion, which the biblical writers remember as a form of divine correction of Judah for breaking their covenant with God. However, the psalmist does not gloss over the injustices perpetrated by the invaders against the marginalized, such as the widows, the temporary resident (sojourner, Hebrew ger), and the orphan.
Such calls for divine justice adopt God’s own desire for his righteousness to fill the earth. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously quoted God’s call to put away self-righteous religion and instead to champion justice:
Amos 5:24
24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
In Psalm 82, God himself takes his stand in his heavenly court and declares,
Psalm 82:2–4 (ESV)
2 “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
When we embrace lament as a practice of praying for justice, we become students of Scripture. We courageously train our souls to embrace disruption to our comfort as we grieve over the injustices that grieve God himself.
In both forms, repentance and a call for justice, lament dares to say the quiet parts out loud. Lament subordinates decorum to real talk with God.
May this season of prayer and fasting ignite in all of us a courage and passion to recapture biblical lament for all it’s worth. To embrace lament is to embrace the heart of God.
Listening Prayer:
Take a minute to breathe and quiet yourself. Ask the Holy Spirit:
· Where have I elevated my personal comfort over matters that grieve the heart of God, both my own patterns of sin and injustices in the world?
· What sins do you want to hear me confess and heal me of?
· What injustices do you want me to prayerfully lament?
Pause and listen. Be still. Pay attention to what comes to mind—a word, a memory, a feeling, a name, a situation.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, thank you for speaking truth in grace to me. I surrender my comfort to you. Disrupt me according to your will. Show me where I need to make confession. Help me to name my sin, to honestly express the pain that comes from it, and show me wisdom and tell me deliverance is possible. Now open my eyes to injustices that grieves your heart. Grow in me compassion for others who suffer injustice. Teach me to intercede on their behalf and to show me how to be your hands and feet in bringing your justice to their needs. Continue Your transforming work in me. Amen.
Resources:
Biblical concepts of human wrongdoing (what to lament over) by BibleProject
Sin
Transgression
Iniquity
Biblical concept of doing right (what to lament for) by BibleProject
Justice
Worship Song:
There is a Balm in Gilead by Bishop Yvette A Flunder and Chanticleer Choir
Afflicted Saint, to Christ Draw Near by Sovereign Grace Music