Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament

by Mark Vroegop

lament: turn, complain, ask, and trust.

The psalms of lament open us to the greatness of a God who not only can hear, but also can handle our pain, our self-pity, our blame, and our fear, who can respond to our anger, our disillusionment in the midst of oppression and persecution, under the boot of tyranny and our sense of God-forsakenness in the face of life’s most profound alienations and exiles.

The frustrations expressed in lament push him further toward God, not away.

“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. . . . Those who lament stand on the boundary between the old age and the new and hope for things unseen.”

The entire book of Job is designed not only to highlight innocent suffering but also to demonstrate that human questions and complaints eventually end in humble worship.