Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament

by Mark Vroegop

Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness.

Without hope in God’s deliverance and the conviction that he is all-powerful, there would be no reason to lament when pain invaded our lives.

Christians affirm that the world is broken, God is powerful, and he will be faithful. Therefore, lament stands in the gap between pain and promise.

Lament can be defined as a loud cry, a howl, or a passionate expression of grief. However, in the Bible lament is more than sorrow or talking about sadness. It is more than walking through the stages of grief. Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust.

Lament typically asks at least two questions: (1) “Where are you, God?” (2) “If you love me, why is this happening?”

(1) an address to God, (2) a complaint, (3) a request, and (4) an expression of trust and/or praise.

turn, complain, ask, and trust.

Could it be that our prosperity, comfort, and love of triumphalism are reflected in what we sing? Is it possible that our unfamiliarity with lament is a by-product of a subtle misunderstanding of Christian suffering?

he is not just talking, complaining, or whimpering; he’s crying out in prayer.

It takes faith to pray a lament.

Prayerful lament is better than silence.

Despair lives under the hopeless resignation that God doesn’t care, he doesn’t hear, and nothing is ever going to change. People who believe this stop praying. They give up.

A thought, be it good or bad, can be dealt with when it is made articulate.”

Honestly praying this way recognizes that pain and suffering often create difficult emotions that are not based upon truth but feel true, nonetheless.

Hurting people are given permission to grieve, but not aimlessly or selfishly. The biblical language of lament is able to redirect weeping people to what is true despite the valley they are walking through. I long for the experience of personal and corporate lament to be multiplied. How many Christians need to learn to lament? How many need to have their thinking redirected?

How much of this is just personal experience? Like, this is just what happened when I did have genuine faith in God, did believe him, and also walked thru it. (Mom, Dad, CSA) You’re just constrained. You don’t have any other choice but to turn to him and believe he’s doing good for his own glory and our good, even amidst it. And you have to acknowledge that you might never get to see the good. I don’t know that anyone but the Holy Spirit and circumstance can actually teach this. It has to be worked out in the heart. I can say to Erin a million times that this is how God expects her to grieve, how she can be blessed in her grief over Ben’s health, AND IT CAN BE TRUE, AND she can never actually experience it because the faith isn’t there - not said as an indictment, but as a statement of fact. And if the faith isn’t there, then there is never that trust that God is and that he rewards those who diligently seek him and that that reward will be peace amidst the hurt which may never dissipate. So I think yes, I need to learn this a spiritual discipline, but like all spiritual disciplines, it could be a means of grace to faith for some, and for others it could be an empty form which they later come to resent when they “realize” God isn’t real later in their life, because their faith was contingent upon their circumstances resolving and it never happened. I think this is a lot of what I’m reading now on deconstruction places. It isn’t that people didn’t have language for lament. Faith naturally cries these things out to God. It’s that questions were shut down, grief was silenced and forced to be smiley, or took too long, or said too many unacceptable or improper things, and those of tender faith were tossed aside and/or continued to be abused. The evil wasn’t stopped by those who had the power and responsibility to do so! How then will those they led to faith be able to trust the God they preached and lament?? This is silicon a bigger problem than just the individual grieving life circumstance, although it certainly includes that. How much trouble did I have trusting that God is good through Mom’s sickness as a DIRECT consequence of my interactions with my father, who weaponized scripture to get his way and make me his servant? And how much more confusing for the parishioners whose pastors treated them in this way?? To then go on and preach lamenting as the solution and to assume that trust still be given to the same institutions and pastors and that all the people need to know is how to lament and take their selfish pain and direct it to God “in the proper way” is just an extension of the same abuses to people like my sister. And probably my brother as well. I don’t know that grief can follow a formula. And also. I believe that lament is the natural progression of grief for the Christian who has the Holy Spirit. It’s like catechism etc - I’m not sure how much you can make people learn.

For the Christian, the exodus event—the place where we find ultimate deliverance—is the cross of Christ. This is where all our questions—our heartaches and pain—should be taken. The cross shows us that God has already proven himself to be for us and not against us.

Now THIS is what I do believe believers are responsible for- helping each other remember the whole gospel. That it’s REAL and it’s NOW and that it gives real victory amidst life. Christians have always done this.

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:36–39)

Jesus bought the right to make everything right.

“All will be well. All manner of things will be well.”

If you don’t have the words, read one of the psalms of lament out loud.

If you read the psalms of lament, you’ll discover a lot of creative complaining. You’ll find expressions of sorrow, fear, frustration, and even confusion. In other words, the Bible is full of complaints. And apparently they aren’t sinful. In fact, they were set to music as an entire congregation sang their frustration. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving you permission to vent self-centered rage at God when life has not turned out like you planned. I’m not suggesting for a second you have a right to be angry with God. I think that is always wrong. But I do think that there’s a place for a kind of complaining that is biblical.

No right doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, that it isn’t a natural response. See, I think this fear of sinning, of actually being angry at God for circumstances, ESPECIALLY in calvinist settings where literally everything is predetermined and the hurt is very natural, KEEPS people from bringing anything to God at all!

anger or denial.

Their pain gives rise to rage. And their spiritual life is never the same. Sometimes it even results in a complete rejection of Christianity as pain paves the way for unbelief.

Still others seem to think that godliness means a new form of stoicism. They try to project an air of contentment that feels like denial. “Everything’s fine,” they say. But you know it isn’t.

Lament is how those who know what God is like and believe in him address their pain. God is good, but life is hard.

“A lament honestly and specifically names a situation or circumstance that is painful, wrong, or unjust—in other words, a circumstance that does not align with God’s character and therefore does not make sense within God’s kingdom.”2 Lament is the language of a people who believe in God’s sovereignty but live in a world with tragedy.

They are fighting to trust in those promises through the tears.

The word “hiding” can mean secret, hidden, and concealed. But it also can have more emotional meanings, such as withdrawn, ignoring, and pretending to be one thing while actually being another.

The psalmist is basically telling God that he feels as if God is not being God-like.

The psalmist is deeply struggling, and not just with his pain; he’s struggling with God. Injustice is one thing, but God’s lack of intervention is a deeper pain—one that creates complaint.

Rather than allowing painful circumstances to rule him, creating bitterness or despair, he lays out his angst. The specificity sharpens the prayer. The frustrations expressed in lament push him further toward God, not away.

My practice was to write out a list of complaints and then to talk to God about them. I found that pain made me myopic. It tended to narrow my focus on the sorrow that took over my life. Nothing else mattered. At least it felt that way. With this desperation for relief, it was easy to become preoccupied with the weight of sorrow, the unfairness of life, or the fear of never being happy again. Left unchecked, this could create a self-focused emotional spiral. But as I wrote out my complaints and talked to the Lord about them, it was surprising how they lost their hold on me.

Proud, demanding questions from a heart that believes it is owed something from God will never lean into true lament.

Our new normal was a brutal fight.

confidently calling upon God to act in accordance with his character.

It is how lament moves from the why question of complaint to the who question of request.

Boldly asking God for help based upon who he is and what he’s promised eclipses the complaints. I say “eclipses” for a reason. It captures the fact that why questions are not always answered before we move into requests.

As we make our bold requests, “Why is this happening?” moves into the shadow of “Who is God?”

In his deep pain and his sense of abandonment, he anchors his soul to who God is and what he

has done.

Is there anything you have stopped asking God to do in your life? Has the pain of circumstances or have the disappointments of unanswered prayers led you to a resigned silence as to what you want to see God do?

I have realized I just have quit asking. God is sovereign and will do what he wants no matter my request. I have to fight to believe his character and he desires to answer me.

The character of God, combined with the desperation of pain, pushes David to be bold.

When our sin is the cause of our lament, it’s good to know that we can still ask for God’s mercy.

The big-picture narrative of the gospel anticipates ultimate restoration in the new heavens and the new earth. This theme is woven through Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Lament yearns for the fulfillment of this future reality. It could be your longing for restoration in your soul, your marriage, your family, your church, or your nation—or the final restoration of the world with the permanent removal of pain and brokenness. Regardless, this request asks God to bring spiritual healing at any level and in any area.

If you’ve felt the deafening silence of heaven, reach out to the Lord and ask him for help.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15).

Jesus lived a life of lament. He knows the sorrows of injustice, hypocrisy, false accusations, physical weakness, temptations, betrayal, and feeling abandoned. That becomes the basis for our bold requests.

Pain can bring clarity. Loss affirms trust.

Rebekah Eklund provides this helpful summary: “The prayer of lament rejoices in God’s saving actions in the now and hopes urgently for God’s saving actions in the future, the ‘not yet’ of the eschatological timeline.

As we wait for future deliverance, our spiritual posture need not be passive. While there may be painful circumstances beyond our control, our waiting can be spiritually productive as we intentionally follow the pathway to trust. That is why trust is active patience.

Productivity in pain ain’t it.

Trust is believing what you know to be true even though the facts of suffering might call that belief into question.