24 Words - Lament

This is the second of 24 blog posts each day in June as part of a challenge to remember my sister Anna Murray who died on 20th October 2019. You can read my reflections on my sister here and watch a film I made about her here. If you want to donate to Pancreatic Cancer UK you can do so here. These posts will be short 'thoughts' rather than detailed blog posts.

I've been helped by reading Colin Smiths book 'For all who Grieve' recently. I've reviewed it here. Pastor Smith takes us on a tour of a book most Christians (including me) have never really studied: the book of Lamentations. The pages of this book are soaked in tears, cries to God and gut wrenching lament. Why? Well there were at least five reasons: Jerusalem was under siege (Jeremiah 52 v 4), there was no food (Lam 1 v 11), the city walls were breached (Lam 1 v 7), the people were subjugated by a cruel enemy (Lam 1 v 5) and just when things couldn't get any worse the temple was destroyed (Lam 4 v 1). The younger children starved while the older children were taken in to captivity (Lam 1 v 5). Women were abused in the streets, others were enslaved. It is a horrific picture of brutal violence and trauma. We are horrified by some of the descriptions of brutality and starvation that Lamentations lays before us. Every family must have experienced incredible loss and grief. Jeremiah sums it up in Lam 5 v 15 'The joy of our hearts has ceased our dancing has been turned to mourning.' I find it interesting that God devotes a whole book of the Bible to lament. Of course much of Job and the Psalms follow a similar theme but Lamentations has lament writ large across its pages.  God wants us to study lament.

The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by David Roberts (1850)

Lamentations is a book of tears. We see it in mentioned in a variety of verses ch 1 v 16, 2 v 11, 2 v 18-19 and 3 v 48-50. Colin Smith says 'tears are the shuddering of the body at the pain of the soul. They are a gift from God, because they act as a release valve for your pain. So let the tears flow and don't hold them back.' So often tears are seen as a sign of weakness and over emotionalism but as we see Jeremiah weeping over the devastation of Jerusalem they were tears of love for God's people and God's glory. Jesus himself wept at the tomb of Lazarus - not because he has lost hope but at the devastation that death had wrought on the world.

There is a time for lament.  Grief is a natural response to loss and tragedy.  Tears are a gift from God that should not be suppressed.  We can take great comfort from the promise that every one of our tears are seen by God: 'Put my tears in your bottle.  Are they not in your book?' (Psalm 56 v 8).  Jesus experienced grief, sorrow, loneliness, betrayal and ultimately abandonment.  He is a High Priest who is able to sympathise with us in our weakness - literally 'co-suffer' with us.  There is no cold, detached pity in Christ.  As Smith says ‘God gave His people a counsellor who wept with them, put the pain of their loss into words, ministered to their guilt and grief, and brought hope and healing from the ashes of their loss.’

Our only hope in loss is the steadfast love of the Lord (3 v 22-23).  Yes we have the hope of heaven but Lamentations gives us hope in the hear and now.  The grieving person needs new mercies every morning and that is what God promises.  It is seeing the Lord as his portion that give Jeremiah hope in the utter carnage of Jerusalem (ch 3 v 24).  As Colin Smith says ‘Hope lies in the faithfulness of God, but it is not easy to fix in your mind the great truth of God’s steadfast love. Jeremiah models what this looks like: ‘But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope’ (3 v 21). This calling to mind involves a deliberate and repeated effort by a grieving person who feels weighed down, trapped, afraid and exhausted but refuses to give in. He hauls his mind from what he has lost to what he has, knowing that his hope is in God alone.’  God gives us hope in our lament, grace for today and new mercies for tomorrow.