My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; by night as well, but I find no rest. Psalm 22:1-2
Who in your life can you tell just about anything?
Patricia, the person I have been married to and with for the last 25 years, and 2 men named Brad Davidorf and Brent Darnell are my “people.” When I tell one of them that I am in a dark and lonely spot, just the act of sharing with them changes my reality. My telling them may not actually solve the presenting problem. What is most transformative in the moment is that our connection takes what was previously wrapped in darkness gives it a peak of the light of the love and friendship that we have for each other.
I have been learning, most of my life, how to have the same kind of relationship with God. We can shake a fist at him when things fall apart. We can laugh with her when life goes our way. We can say, out loud, that we feel as if we are alone,(even if we are not). We can even do like the psalmist and lament.
Prayer is not, as writer Rob Bell says, “Just saying pretty things to the sky.” Prayer is about honesty with God.Prayer- and more specifically, lament- is, during bad times, our coming out with our grittiness and ugliness and opening up to God about who we really are and how our life feels. Lamenting is an intimate act of devotion that opens up our hearts and minds to God’s healing and life-giving work. Lamenting prayer promises not just a “peak” of light, but the light of God.
I have been learning, most of my life, how to have the same kind of relationship with God. We can shake a fist at him when things fall apart. We can laugh with her when life goes our way. We can say, out loud, that we feel as if we are alone,(even if we are not). We can even do like the psalmist and lament.
Prayer is not, as writer Rob Bell says, “Just saying pretty things to the sky.” Prayer is about honesty with God.Prayer- and more specifically, lament- is, during bad times, our coming out with our grittiness and ugliness and opening up to God about who we really are and how our life feels. Lamenting is an intimate act of devotion that opens up our hearts and minds to God’s healing and life-giving work. Lamenting prayer promises not just a “peak” of light, but the light of God.
Lament. Call out. Share your heart with God and trusted human beings. (Remember- you have an army of us at All Saints’!) Jesus laments when he experiences the darkness of abandonment and physical, spiritual and psychological pain and suffering. Holy week comes to its culmination in the moment of darkness Jesus experienced on the cross.
Remember, friends, that resurrection follows his lament.
What that offers us is a beautiful pattern for how to live our lives in an often difficult world. We will have cause to lament. Yet, we are promised- that when we connect our darkness with God’s love, through the ear of a friend or through lament or prayer, resurrection will happen.
Shalom-
Tim
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