I Love Lament

Our guest preacher, Rev. Riana Shaw Robinson, led off the sermon with the words, “I love lament.” Typically, that’s not how we think about facing our sorrow head on. She looked at this verse with us:

How long, Lord God Almighty,
    will your anger smolder
    against the prayers of your people? - Psalm 80:4

One of the things that Riana pointed out about why she loves lament is because it’s so honest: it’s telling the truth about how life feels. And that’s what we do in our most intimate relationships - we fight (hopefully, we fight well!). We give honest feedback and that means letting God know when we are sad and angry. That honesty leads us beyond just the anger and sadness to our deepest longings: for a world that is set right (which Jesus sometimes called “the renewal of all things” - part of City Church’s vision statement).

The other things Riana pointed out was that if we stay with it long enough, lament can lead us to open our mind and imagination to envision a world without suffering and to start working towards it. In that sense, lament is one of the great motivators of the kindom of God. It doesn’t work if we get stuck in our despondency - but it does work if we leverage our sadness to imagine how things could actually be better.

How familiar are you with the process of lament? Perhaps take some time to list out to God some of the things that are wrong in the world today - both the big world and in your little world. Then stick with the feelings that come up and see if you can ride them down into the deeper longings and even to the possibilities of a new way that things could be.