Lost in Lament

Psalm 22:1 – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groanings?”

The Bible devotes a lot of content to expressing disappointment and disillusionment.  In the book of Psalms alone fifty-eight chapters are lament psalms.  In them we see begging, pleading, questioning, crying and arguing.  It’s so tempting to see a few lines about hardship and loss as fleeting thoughts that were quickly resolved as we read a few more lines down.  By doing so we fail to see the painful days, weeks, or months that drove the psalmist to ultimately say, “Where are you?  Why have you forsaken me?”  In those seasons of pain, we feel lost - utterly lost. 

Author Jamaica Kincaid writes, “You cry when you’re born because your lungs expand.  You breathe.  I think that’s really kind of significant.  You come into the world crying, and it’s a sign that you are alive.”  As terrible as our hardships can be, our cries are a sign of life.  Loss of a loved one to cancer, a job lay-off, a love betrayed, deep divisions within families, our own addictions – the list is long.  They are the very things that should shrink our view of who God is.  Yet even in these moments when we feel punched in the gut and our breath taken away, we eventually breathe again.  Our lungs expand, our worldview expands, our view of who God is to us expands. 

It’s believed by some that the sound of air breathed in and out sounds like saying the Hebrew name for God, ‘Yahweh’.  As we inhale and exhale heaviness of grief, it is amazing to think we whisper God’s name.  The God that seems very distant is so close that he is hidden within our very breath. 

Cole Arthur Riley offers this meditation in Black Liturgies.

INHALE: How long, O God?

EXHALE: This is too much to hold

INHALE: I am not okay

EXHALE: God, with you I am safe

INHALE: I don’t have to hold every pain at once

EXHALE: I can feel and not be consumed

INHALE: These tears are sacred