"Poetry reaches to the realm beyond the world of sight and sound to reveal what our senses long to see and hear. It is the language not so much of the sublime, but of the truly real--a reality that cannot be grasped through scientific or theological precision. Theological propositions are necessary for understanding truth, but truth is ultimately relational, and relationship is the domain of poetry. Poetry is God's invitation to glimpse the unseen--His very character."
Dr. Dan B. Allender & Dr. Temper Longman III "The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God"
Like all things in life, we tend to want to push through the difficult and hard things. If possible, we'd like to avoid pain altogether. When it comes to emotional pain and turmoil, we tend to avoid painful feelings rather than face them...we'd rather mask them, ignore them, deny them, or minimize them. We keep ourselves busy so we don't have to think about how hard life really is. We distract ourselves from pain through food, shopping, sex, alcohol, and entertainment. We don't know how to hurt, to grieve, or to experience heartache.
In Western culture, we have lost the art of lament. For those in Old Testament times, expressing one's grief and sorrow was the expected way to go through the hard times in life. The Israelites were always speaking to God with honesty and raw emotion. They bombarded Him with questions and expected Him to respond. They cried out to Him in the face of all their fears, sorrows, and shame.
Sometimes we can feel uncomfortable with the laments in Scripture. They are too honest and real. They ask questions of God we can't imagine having the nerve to ask. The level of passion and assertiveness that the laments express seems to cross some line that we fear to cross.
Author Paul Miller, in A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships, discusses the honesty of the laments:
Such honesty seldom characterizes our praying. Our inability to lament is primarily due to the influence of the Greek mind on the early church. Greek Stoicism believed that emotions--anything that interrupted the goal of a calm and balanced life--were bad. The passionate person was the immature person. Balance was everything...A lament grieves that the world is unbalanced. It grieves at the gap between reality and God's promise. It believes in a God who is there, who can act in time and place. It doesn't drift into cynicism or unbelief, but engage God passionately with what's wrong.
This world is a sinful, broken place. Things are not as they should be. Loved ones die, people hurt and reject us, and temptations surround us on every side. We need to be honest about the horrors and sorrows of this world. We need to cry out to God for help. We need to come to the One who is sovereign over all things and lay our cares at His feet.
We need to be believers who know how to lament, not simply for the sake of catharsis or emotional relief, but because we believe that God rules and reigns over all things. We need to lament not because we are without hope but because we have faith in God. We also need to lament so that we can enter into the pain we so often avoid in order to know the peace that God gives those who come to Him in faith. We need to lament so we can learn more about God, about His redemptive purposes in this world, about ourselves, and about our greatest need in Christ. And we need to lament so that we can experience more of God's amazing grace.
Christina Fox, "A Heart Set Free: A Journey to Hope Through the Psalms of Lament", pp. 76-78.
The Prologue:
Through the invisible ingress
I do myself press
To pursue the holy and divine
And Your presence here find.
To grasp hold of You and all Your worth
Transcend the wretchedness of earth
Acquire hope when none is found here
Glimpse the One who makes tears disappear.
To endeavor to worship from the depths of despair
Flee despondency and the sins that snare
Wait upon You when strength is depleted
When from the war I have retreated.
Through the invisible ingress
I do myself press
Lacking, but desperately trusting
Growth in the crushing.
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"Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer." Psalm 4:1
When affliction pours down from the sky
When anguish cannot be denied
When sorrow and sadness are my closest friends
When night's shadows have no end
When despair is a'calling
When from hope one is falling
When Death's valley I walk
When discussion of trials is more than idle talk
When pain has ripped me to shreds
When continued living is what I dread
I will raise my voice in lament
Until all my words are spent
And to my misery I have given full vent
O great God, grant me release from this torment.
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"Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle. They were hungry and thirsty and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress." Psalm 107:4-6
"The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help." Psalm 18: 4-6a
Wandering
Wandering in the wilderness
Barren and depleted
Shaken and afraid.
Wandering
Wandering in the wasteland
Sterile and impoverished
Desolate and parched.
Wandering
Wanting--lacking--needing.
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"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. " Psalm 22:1-2
Breathe in
Breathe out
It's not a dream
Breathe in
Breathe out
Try not to scream.
Breathe in
Breathe out
The throbbing whys
Breathe in
Breathe out
The piercing sighs
Breathe in
Breathe out.
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"Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief. My life is consumed with anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak." Psalm 31:9-10
Ice raining down
Seeping deep
Chilling, freezing
Emotions locked inside
Freezing, chilling
Ice seeping deep
Frozen heart
Torn apart
A longing
A sobbing
Ice raining down
Seeping deep.
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"Listen to my prayer, O God, do not ignore my plea; hear me and answer me. My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught at the voice of the enemy, at the stares of the wicked; for they bring down suffering upon me and revile me in their anger. My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death assail me. Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me." Psalm 55:1-5
'Tis less pleasant things that I have dreamed
That leave me wondering why
'Tis less pleasant things that I have dreamed
Pain that cannot be denied
These inner images
Have left me weary
Only wanting to die
'Tis less pleasant things that I have dreamed
I have seen my own world's demise
Fatal crash, roaring dash
Pieces everywhere
Hope forgot, love does rot
Life is but a calamitous affair
'Tis less pleasant things that I have dreamed
And peace appears to be nowhere.
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"Your hands shaped me and made me. Will You now turn and destroy me? Remember that You molded me like clay. Will You now turn me to dust again? Job 10:8-9
What more do You want of me, God?
What more?
If there was something left
I would give it
But You have taken it all
And I am gutted, decimated
Eviscerated and empty.
If I could simply "feel" Your presence
That--that would bring relief
But I lie here
A cold corpse before You
Hollow
Bereft of man and my God.
Will You not rescue me?
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"How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death." Psalm 13:1-3
Clouds laid heavy upon the sky
Pregnant with promise that they denied
Unmoved, unfazed
Taunting
Expectation lost in humidity.
Prayers laid heavy upon the sky
Words with wind in the unreleased precipitate
Searching, seeking
Striving
For a crack in all the density.
Still I reach for You.
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