For my worship class this week, we were assigned an exercise in Lawrence Hull Stookey's Let the Whole Church Say Amen!, to write prayers of lament. Here are a few important points Stookey made in his introduction, followed by my own prayer of lament:"Probably most Christians do much more lamenting over the back fence than in the house of the Lord... People who complain are looked upon as lacking in faith. One is supposed to trust God in every circumstance without complaint. The silver lining of every cloud is to be identified at once, no matter how tragic the circumstances... Those who suffer the greatest pain thereby feel excluded... Good lamentation is honesty before the God who already knows how we feel... To put a smiley face before the All-Knowing One is to engage in deceit. Furthermore, God is both willing and able to accept whatever venom we spew out. Not only to accept it, but to redeem it, to transform it."
An individual prayer of lament based on Psalm 55:
Show yourself to me, God!
I need to know that you are here.
I need to know that you will not turn away,
That you will not betray me.
Listen to me, and come!
I am shaken to my core,
I am broken and terrified.
I wish I could break free from myself,
To leave this body that writhes in agony,
Or to crawl deep inside and shut myself out,
To silence the screaming inside
And rest, if only for a moment.
How can this happen?
How can it be that the ones I trusted,
My friends, my family,
Hand me over as if I were nothing to them?
I can handle the taunts of the enemy,
But this I cannot bear:
Happy memories turned to searing brands in my mind,
People and places I loved showing the darkness within,
Poisoning what I thought was a deep well
Of nourishment and cleansing.
Make them stop!
I am crying out to you, God;
No more running to them,
For their hearts are hard.
But your heart, O God, is neither false nor fickle,
And I will beat upon the door of your heart
Until it opens and lets me in,
And I will come into the presence of your mercy.
Human promises are breakable;
They are shattered by a word.
But your Word, O Lord, stands forever,
And if your Word is my foundation,
My feet will never slip
And I will stand on your grace.
This is too heavy for me,
So I give it over to you.
I trust you will know what to do with it
Better than I ever could,
So I empty myself of this anger and grief,
And I wait for your healing touch. AMEN.
1 comments:
I've always been particularly uncomfortable with the idea that a Christian is stoic. I don't see that witnessed to anywhere in the Bible—Jesus wept and was angry, which just continues the tradition of frustration expressed by both the people of God and God Himself. We are totally within our rights to ask God, "What in Heaven is taking so long for you to save us?", or even "I don't know what this is, but it doesn't look like what you've promised me.", and we can find Biblical words to use to express that. Yet when it comes to expressing those thoughts with other Christians, we're often told to shut up and "have faith".
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