WORDS FOR THIS GENERATION: THE LOST ART OF LAMENT

I don’t know about you in this season, but what I have felt in 2020 has been a deep and aching emotional rollercoaster which just hasn’t fit into a category for me.  Oh, I have had strained relationships with people I love.  We, as a family, made big moves in 2020 and lost the friendship of many who were dear to us and couldn’t understand our decisions.  I quit a job I loved for a new opportunity, which was cut short as the new company went in a different direction.  And I was laid off 1.5 months later.  Oh, I have had some things to grieve about this year.  (As I am sure many of you have) And when I need to, I have let myself grieve those things. 

But to be honest, none of those things have caused this ache.  I have learned that situations always change but the God who loves me never will.  So, not being able to pin down this pain has been an interesting journey.  It’s like an undercurrent that just sort of settled somewhere in my spirit as 2020 dawned and it hasn’t left me nearly 12 months later.

When this happens to me, I have learned this means I am just supposed to sit in it and let God show me why it is there.  Sometimes it takes a whole year for Him to tell me what’s up.  About a week ago, I felt the Holy Spirit whisper to me, “I want you to write to my people and tell them about the lost art of the lament.”

I immediately went to the dictionary to look up what lament meant.  To lament: a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.  But that definition felt like it was talking about a certain kind of lament, one expressing grief or sorrow.  But what I have been feeling doesn’t fit into the category of grief nor sorrow.  I mostly just felt deep emotion, which comprised lots of different emotions with it.  I was trying to process what God was wanting me to understand and release over this generation.  So, I do what I always do; I turned to the Scripture for help.

One of the people in the Bible who I think had the closest, most honest, and powerful relationships with God was King David.  David was called by God to be a man after God’s own heart.  King David is credited with writing over 50% of the book of Psalms.  And scholars believe anywhere between one third to one half of the Psalms are laments. 

This is where I felt all that undercurrent of ache start to pour out.  The Lord wasn’t talking to me about grief in the traditional sense, where it’s about something or someone you lost, he was talking about lament as it has to do with our relationship to Him.   When you read over the Psalms of David which are classified as laments, David is talking about himself and God.  That is pretty much it.  

David’s laments are conversations with God which don’t look pretty, aren’t perfectly fluffed up and proofread, they are just hardcore raw emotion that he was literally pouring out before His God, His Heavenly Father, and His friend.  “How long, Lord?  Will you forget me forever?  Will you hide your face from me? (Psalm 13:1) “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.  My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me.  My mouth is dried up…” (Psalm 22:14-15a)

As I began to unpack what this meant for me and for this generation, I realized something incredible.  The lost art of the lament is the part of our walk with Jesus where we get to be a complete and total mess before Him.  BUT it is also that this process of lamenting to Him and with Him is not only something we are supposed to do.  It is something that GLORIFIES Him and brings Him the WORSHIP of a “broken and contrite heart”; something which He has promised not to despise. (Psalm 51, paraphrased).

In our Christian culture it has for too long become a place of “if you name it and if you claim it”, you will experience blessing and breakthrough.  And although our words do have great power; and we must declare that which we believe to be true about God, ourselves, and our future.  Maybe we also need to understand that lamenting before Him, just as David did, also brings a breakthrough into our situation which can only be birthed in a relationship; one that is  not built on my perfect words of praise but of my honest declaration of the ache, the emotions, the truth of my situation brought before a God who desperately wants us to allow Him to show up when we truly are so weak that our “bones are out of joint and we are completely and fully washed up, poured out, and drained”.  Not only does God desperately desire your laments to be brought before Him, but it also brings Him glory when we trust Him with the depth of the ache we feel.

In fact, I would imagine that the type of laments David was bringing before the Lord were literally things He could only have said to God amid a dark, quiet, and completely isolated room.  I pray that we, as a generation, are unafraid to approach God in the same manner and rediscover the lost art of lamenting before a God who desires to be known by you in all seasons, moments, and places.

In order to walk in our Kingdom identity, we must be willing to give God all of ourselves.  In the same way that David did in his laments.  If we cannot stand before our God in the nakedness of all our “stuff” how will we ever be able to show our true self to a world which is desperately crying out for the authenticity of a gospel which promises a full measure of Heavenly identity, authority, and power.