Expressing Our Grief Through Lament

Grief Shakes Our Faith

It’s hard to believe in a gracious God in the midst of grief. C.S. Lewis says that “we reason that if God is almighty, we shouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place. By appearances he either is unable to help or doesn’t care…if God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both. This is the problem of pain, in its simplest form.”

“Go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away…Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?…The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all, but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

Grief will shake what we think we know about God. It’s hard to understand suffering and a good, loving God. 

Expressing Our Grief

The Bible is full of psalms and laments to help us express our grief. At least a third of the Psalms are songs of lament. God has given us His word to express our pain. Even Christ himself on the Cross used the psalms to express his pain of separation from God. Ps. 22:1 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” or Ps. 74:1 “Oh God, why do you cast us off forever?”

Lamenting

Book of Lamentations - Judah’s calamitous experience in Babylon. God is perceived as a tormentor and a predator while the people are struggling in despair, bitterness and ridicule from people around them. 

“I am the man who has seen affliction

    under the rod of his wrath;

2 he has driven and brought me

    into darkness without any light;

3 surely against me he turns his hand

    again and again the whole day long.

4 He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;

    he has broken my bones;

5 he has besieged and enveloped me

    with bitterness and tribulation;

6 he has made me dwell in darkness

    like the dead of long ago.

7 He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;

    he has made my chains heavy;

8 though I call and cry for help,

    he shuts out my prayer;

9 he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;

    he has made my paths crooked.

10 He is a bear lying in wait for me,

    a lion in hiding;

11 he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces;

    he has made me desolate;

12 he bent his bow and set me

    as a target for his arrow.

13 He drove into my kidneys

    the arrows of his quiver;

14 I have become the laughingstock of all peoples,

    the object of their taunts all day long.

15 He has filled me with bitterness;

    he has sated me with wormwood.

16 He has made my teeth grind on gravel,

    and made me cower in ashes;

17 my soul is bereft of peace;

    I have forgotten what happiness is;

18 so I say, “My endurance has perished;

    so has my hope from the Lord.”

19 Remember my affliction and my wanderings,

    the wormwood and the gall!

20 My soul continually remembers it

    and is bowed down within me.

21 But this I call to mind,

    and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

    his mercies never come to an end;

23 they are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness.

24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

    “therefore I will hope in him.”

25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,

    to the soul who seeks him.

26 It is good that one should wait quietly

    for the salvation of the Lord.

27 It is good for a man that he bear

    the yoke in his youth.

28 Let him sit alone in silence

    when it is laid on him;

29 let him put his mouth in the dust—

    there may yet be hope;

30 let him give his cheek to the one who strikes,

    and let him be filled with insults.

31 For the Lord will not

    cast off forever,

32 but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion

    according to the abundance of his steadfast love;

33 for he does not afflict from his heart

    or grieve the children of men.”

It’s important that we acknowledge that for those who are grieving, many will feel that God is attacking them, putting them into darkness, isolating them, hindering their prayers. There will be confusion, pain, loneliness, questions, doubts, anger. We shouldn’t hush these things and dismiss them. If we are honest, deep down perhaps we have the very same doubts and fears. Or based upon the reality that we have never been in this situation before and therefore we assume that the person has weak faith or lack the wisdom and sanctification. 

But we see the reality that the people are turning to God in Lamentations. They have not abandoned God but they are crying out to the one they know can only help them. Let’s not be hasty when people bring their questions to God. They are working out their faith. The concern is when someone stops turning to God for help and turn their back on him that we should be concerned. Take for example Ps. 88. The last verse, verse 18 ends with this line 

“You have taken from me friend and neighbor—

    darkness is my closest friend.”

No ending in hope, no resolution, no taking heart in God’s love or grace. But the hope we gather from this psalm is the fact that the psalmist is talking with God. He hasn’t given up and comes to God for help, even if it ends in darkness. This makes us uncomfortable but it should give us hope that God can allow us to experience this isolation and pain, and God does not reject us.

Complaint:

Psalms and laments allow us to file a complaint with God. However, complaining isn’t whining. Harold Senkbeil says “If you’ve ever read your medical records, you’ll know that medical complaints are simply the physical symptoms of your distress. When you go to your doctor, you’re not whining; you’re just explaining where you hurt. You list your complaints because you know your condition should receive attention. It may not go away; some of the symptoms may remain. But you’ve gone to someone who can do something about it.”

We are acknowledging that we were made to depend upon God. We are not independent creatures and suffering reminds of our weakness and vulnerability. We come to God with our complaints asking him to do what we cannot, telling him where it hurts and asking for grace to take it away or to endure it.

Keller, Tim Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering, 215. 

Lewis, C.S., The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics, 560, 658

Senkbeil, Henry, Christ and Calamity, 25.