lament

Some days I can hardly bear the feelings of "all that is not right". I think it even gets worse for me the more I immerse myself simultaneously in broken places/relationships and in Scripture. God gives me more and more hunger and vision for "rightness", shalom, justice and He gives me more and more truth to the realities of my own brokenness and that around me. The other day I was meeting with a friend who told me that he wished he could help remove some of the angst that I am feeling. My reading this morning in the book Reconciling All Things reminds me why the depth of angst is so critically important for this journey, and how, though I am to live in the hope, peace, and rest of God the Victor, I am also to bear this important and heavy angst.

From the chapter "The Discipline of Lament":

"Lament is not despair. It is not whining. It is not a cry into a void. Lament is a cry directed to God. It is the cry of those who see the truth of the world's deep wounds and the cost of seeking peace. It is the prayer of those who are deeply disturbed by the way things are."

"Over and again, lament teaches us about both what must be learned and what must be unlearned in order to live well in a broken world. If we are to participate in God's plan to reconcile all things in Jesus Christ, we must begin to listen to this cry."

"The first language of the church in a deeply broken world is not strategy, but prayer. The journey of reconciliation is grounded in a call to see and encounter the rupture of this world so truthfully that we are literally slowed down. We are called to a space where any explanation or action is too easy, too fast, too shallow- a space where the right response can only be a desperate cry directed to God. We are called to learn the anguished cry of lament. "

"..the more intensely we engage the divides of this world at the places of pain, the more the truth about what is wrong with us comes to the surface. The more we learn to lament, the more we see the need for time to grow, to forgive, and learn how to love. "