Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament

by Mark Vroegop

Every person meant well. I appreciated their attempts to address our pain. But it became clear that most people did not know how to join us in our grief. Lament was just not familiar terrain.

Finding an explanation or a quick solution for grief, while an admirable goal, can circumvent the opportunity afforded in lament—to give a person permission to wrestle with sorrow instead of rushing to end it. Walking through sorrow without understanding and embracing the God-given song of lament can stunt the grieving process.

I began helping people discover how lament invites us to grieve and trust, to struggle and believe. I walked people through their grief by leading them—even encouraging them—to lament.

Lament is how you live between the poles of a hard life and trusting in God’s sovereignty.

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

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.

You might think lament is the opposite of praise. It isn’t. Instead, lament is a path to praise as we are led through our brokenness and disappointment.6 The space between brokenness and God’s mercy is where this song is sung. Think of lament as the transition between pain and promise. It is the path from heartbreak to hope.

I’ll use four words to help us learn to lament: turn, complain, ask, and trust.

Lament invites us to turn our gaze from the rubble of life to the Redeemer of every hurt. It calls us to turn toward promise while still in pain.

To pray in pain, even with its messy struggle and tough questions, is an act of faith where we open up our hearts to God. Prayerful lament is better than silence. However, I’ve found that many people are afraid of lament. They find it too honest, too open, or too risky. But there’s something far worse: silent despair. Giving God the silent treatment is the ultimate manifestation of unbelief. 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.

Lament is how we learn to live between the poles of a hard life and God’s goodness.

No one taught you how to cry. Tears are part of what it means to be human. But to lament is Christian. It is a prayer of faith for the journey between a hard life and God’s goodness. We need to learn to lament. Through the tears, the first step is to turn to God in prayer.

After we take the first step of turning to God in prayer, the next is bringing our complaints to him. There’s a tension here. I’m sure you already feel it. Complain isn’t a very positive word. We don’t like complainers. It seems like the wrong response to situations where we should be content or thankful. But is that always the case? Is complaining always wrong?

Many people I know fall into one of two camps when walking through suffering: anger or denial.

Some people are so filled with anger at God that they live in a self-made prison of despair and bitterness for the rest of their lives.

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 the language of a people who believe in God’s sovereignty but live in a world with tragedy.

Life is filled with a variety of suffering. Pain comes in many forms. Lament speaks into all the sorrows of life—no matter how small or big.

Some days I would list in a journal everything that was troubling me. 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. Sometimes I even found myself laughing at the silly things I listed. Complaint helped me see myself and my situation more clearly. Since then I’ve made it a regular practice to talk to God more quickly about my questions and frustrations.

For now, I simply want you to see how complaint is more than a series of grievances. It is a path for reorienting your thinking and your feelings.

Come Humble If you’re going to offer a complaint to God, it must be done with a humble heart.

Finally, let me give you a word of caution. While you shouldn’t skip the practice of complaint, you also shouldn’t get stuck there either. Complaint was never meant to be an end in itself. In other words, lament does not give you an excuse to wallow in your questions or frustrations. It is a means to another end. In the same way a surgeon’s cut is meant to heal, so complaint is designed to move us along in our lament. You are not meant to linger in complaint. If you never move beyond complaint, lament loses its purpose and its power.

His complaints are not cul-de-sacs of sorrow but bridges that lead him to God’s character.

Trust is believing what you know to be true even though the facts of suffering might call that belief into question. Lament keeps us turning toward trust by giving us language to step into the wilderness between our painful reality and our hopeful longings.

Choosing to trust through lament requires that we rejoice without knowing how all the dots connect. We decide to let God be his own interpreter, trusting that somehow his gracious plan is being worked out—even if we can’t see it.

“Keep trusting the One who keeps you trusting.”

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse

a deaf world.”

Lament is expressed even though the tension remains. It turns to God in prayer, vocalizes the complaint, asks boldly, and chooses to trust while uncertainty hangs in the air. Lament doesn’t wait for resolution. It gives voice to the tough questions before the final chapter is written. Lament is a journey through the shock and awe of pain.

A broken world will bring its share of grief, but it can also bring wisdom if we are willing to slow down, listen, and learn.

“We watch the news so we know how to pray.”7 So true. But perhaps we could also say, “We watch the news so we know how to lament.”

Lament dares to hope while life is hard.

Lament is a prayer of faith despite your fear.

Lamentations shows us that hope does not come from a change of circumstances. Rather, it comes from what you know to be true despite the situation in front of you.

But answers to prayer and resolution of painful questions do not usually come quickly. Sometimes the answer is not what we’d want or request. The timing may be much slower than we’d hoped. Lament is the prayer language for these gaps. It tells you where to look and whom to trust when pain and uncertainty hang in the air you breathe. When brokenness becomes your life, lament helps you turn to God. It lifts your head and turns your tear-filled eyes toward the only hope you have: God’s grace. I hope you are encouraged by this.

The book of Lamentations shows us how a song of sorrow can remind us about the brokenness of the world, invite us to rehearse hope-filled truth, and confront our idols. Lament can also become a pathway to God’s grace. Laments are memorials, vital records of lessons to be learned.

(turning, complaining, asking, and trusting).

“What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench.”4