Our New Blog Series, Joyous Lament
In 2003, I took a class on the Book of Psalms at Fuller Seminary. That class radically altered how I think about prayer and how I relate to God. The professor presented us with a typology for understanding different kinds of psalms, and it was in that context that I first learned about lament psalms. I learned that laments were the most common type of psalm in the Book of Psalms, and this was a shocking revelation for me. I had always thought about the Psalms as the place where Israel recorded David’s expressive songs of praise and thanksgiving to God. I had never stopped to reflect on or consider all the places in the Psalms where the writers were questioning God, venting to God about the things going wrong in their lives, or begging God to change their circumstances.
Implicitly and explicitly I had been taught that Christians should praise and thank God no matter what was going on in their lives or in the world. Over time, this belief had created an insurmountable barrier between myself and God when I experienced other feelings. When I was feeling far away from God or disappointed by my life circumstances or angry about the pain and suffering I saw going on in the world, I believed that I needed to change those feelings before I could approach God in prayer. This proved to be a difficult, if not impossible, task. So, I just didn’t pray much when I was feeling those things. If I did pray, it was full of apologies for my feelings and then long periods of waiting and hoping for my feelings to change. Needless to say, this cycle tanked my prayer life. It also led to perpetual feelings of guilt because I could not pray as I should.
When I learned that almost half of the 150 psalms in our Bibles are laments, I was floored. How could this be!? I remember reading through the whole Book of Psalms to verify that this was the case. It was true! What was going on? At first, I think I decided these laments must have just been a way that “Old Testament people” talked to God before Jesus came. Surely, it was out of place for Christians who follow Jesus to talk to God like this. Then I learned that Jesus prayed one of these lament psalms on the cross, and I started to consider that maybe there was something deeper going on with these lament psalms that I just didn’t understand.
During this time of discovery, I also read a book by Walter Brueggemann called The Message of the Psalms. In this book, Brueggemann made the case that the people of Israel were very wise when they wrote down and collected these particular psalms. He proposed that different types of psalms were written to help the people of Israel to communicate honestly with God at various stages in their journey, and that these experiences correspond to common experiences or places in which all human beings find themselves in their faith journeys: Orientation, Disorientation and Reorientation.
Praise Psalms: Orientation
The people of Israel used the praise psalms to give voice to their experiences of life going well or as it should. These psalms celebrate the fact that the promises of God are lining up with one’s own life experience. There is a sense of orientation or congruence between the commitments that God has made and the things that one is experiencing. In praise, one confesses God’s faithfulness and righteousness that is being known now and trusted for one’s future. When life is making sense, it is honest and natural for a person of faith to praise God for it.
Lament Psalms: Disorientation
But, inevitably, something will happen that disrupts these feelings of congruence – a friend gets desperately sick; a child gets bullied at school; a loved one goes through a terrible divorce; we get fired from a job that we love. These kinds of experiences surface deeper questions, and our faith can become disoriented. What is God up to? Why has this happened? Are God’s promises really true? Has my faith or trust been misplaced?
The lament psalms were Israel’s way of expressing these feelings of disorientation to God. Israel knew that to praise and thank God when one’s soul is in distress is fake. If one does not honestly express these feelings, it will inevitably lead to a shallow relationship with God. To lament is to trust the relationship enough to honestly express the disconnects that we experience (or feel that we experience) between God’s character and commitments and the details of our lives. Lament also makes space for God to respond and address the disconnects that we experience in a concrete way. That is why most lament psalms also contain a note of hope about the future. Based on past experiences, Israel had a legitimate hope that God would intervene once again and fix whatever had gone wrong.
Thanksgiving Psalms: Re-Orientation
It may take a long time for God to answer, but when God does finally answer it changes us. We grow in our faith. We become oriented back to God again, but we are never the same. Our experiences of lament become the sites where God proves to be a trustworthy savior and healer, and so we look back with thanksgiving. These experiences of God become a story of how God’s love has truly made a difference in our lives, and these stories of God’s love then become a collective testimony of God’s faithfulness that can be passed down to future generations.
This entire process of communication and growth in our relationship with God can be seen in its raw and naked form in the Psalms. Nothing has proven more helpful for me in my own prayer life than to allow the lament Psalms to become a model for my own communication with God when life gets hard. In prayer I now share honestly about what I’m feeling, no matter how ugly it is. I verbalize the questions that I’m wrestling with. I express my doubts and my anger for what seems like God’s absence or slowness. I let God know about the things that just aren’t adding up to me.
I can tell you, time and time again God has met me in my lament. God has comforted my broken heart. God has given clarity and focus to my scattered mind and thoughts. God has wept alongside me as I have wept. God has kicked my butt when I was whining way too much. God has corrected me for being too critical of others. God has intervened in desperate situations. In all these ways, God has been helping me to write my own unique song of thanksgiving with the same refrain as these beautiful and wise songs of old: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).”
About the Author
Aaron is a passionate seeker of God and truth, and he enjoys encouraging others in their own pursuits of the same. He especially likes to think about how God is at work in the most ordinary and mundane aspects of our existence. He loves going on adventures to new places with his wife, Heather, and four kids and his perfect day would involve an excellent cup of coffee (or two!), a hike to somewhere beautiful and serene, and some good conversation over a pint at a warm pub. He currently serves as an adjunct instructor at Portland Seminary and co-leads the CitySalt Kids’ Ministry along with his wife, Heather.