To Lament means to mourn or grieve something that has been lost. In the Bible, the book of Lamentations was written because of the deportation and exile of the Jews from their land. The Jews had been taken as captives in Babylon. They longed for the old days.
In our lives, we mourn or grieve loss when we lose someone we love, or maybe even when we become sick and lose a sense of freedom and independence. We have to depend on others and ask for help. We may be the type who are ashamed or afraid of asking for help because we don’t want to be seen as a burden. These are things that our elders deal with as they develop into old age.
The Word of God cautions us to remember God in the days of our youth. This getting to know God in our youth, I believe helps with lamenting as we approach old age because it gives us a firm foundation to draw on as we lament.
To lament is to bring our complaints, grief, and confusing despondency to the Lord. Lamenting is a form of bringing the things that we grapple with to God—those things that we cannot control―those losses that cannot be recovered.
Examples of lamenting found in scripture are below:
“Why is light given to those in misery,
and life to the bitter of soul,
to those who long for death that does not come,
who search for it more than for hidden treasure, – Job 3:20-21
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish? – Psalms 22:1
The above shows Job being vulnerable about his pain to God even to the point of sharing that he longed for death more than life. Lamenting is a form of being acquainted with our pain in a vulnerable way. This vulnerability is shown before someone of whom we feel has the power and authority to help us. Jesus, himself, uttered the words above mentioned in Psalms 22 while on the cross dying for us. King David prophesied about Jesus’ experience 100s of years before it happened. The point is there is nothing wrong with lamenting. It’s a healthy way to deal with forms of grief and excessive pain. Even Jesus modeled this.
Trust
Lamenting is a type of expression of prayer toward the one who we trust. That is God. The children of Israel lamented to God after losing their promised land. They had to live years without dwelling in their promised land, but at the appointed time, they were restored to their land. Somewhere in our memory as human beings; our minds go back to the idea of God’s promises and his ways working for us. We go to him in the utter nakedness of how we feel regarding our loss and we trust him to handle it. I learned that at the heart of lamenting; there lies a trust in God. Many will look at those who are lamenting as though they are complainers or doing something wrong, but this is something built into us as humans and it’s okay.
God’s Character
Finally, at the heart of lamenting, there is the idea that God is good and that God is just. We don’t lament because we don’t believe God is good, but because we do believe God is good. I’ll be honest, some lamenting sounds like complaining and thus we can be judgmental of those who lament around us.
We can judge people who are in a state of lamenting as not trusting God, or not being people who are of depth in God, but the reality is people who are lamenting the loss of their loved ones, independence, freedom, etc. aren’t doing so because they aren’t strong believers in God’s goodness, but they are thoroughly convinced that the character of God is good, and that is why they don’t understand why God allows things that aren’t so good to occur in our lives. These are honest questions and God can handle them because his character is good. The thing is we may not understand why everything happens the way that it happens and that’s okay. Somethings we will not understand until later when God chooses to reveal it.
In the meantime, go ahead on through your process of grief including lamenting your most vulnerable expressions of pain to God knowing that He is good, and He is trustworthy and He is the lifter of the hung down head.
It’s okay to lament.
But you, LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high. – Psalms 3:3
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