A lot of us were taught, somewhere along the way, that the goal of the Christian life is to feel okay. To be joyful. To trust God so well that hard things do not really knock you sideways. Psalm 22 is a direct challenge to that idea.
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest."
Psalm 22:1-2 — NIVJesus said to them, "Have you never read what David did, when he was hungry and those who were with him... he went into the house of God... and ate the bread of the Presence."
Mark 2:25-26Jesus quoted these exact words from the cross. The Son of God, in the hardest moment in human history, reached for this psalm. Not a psalm of triumph. Not a declaration of faith. A cry of abandonment.
If those words were holy enough for Jesus, they are holy enough for you.
Lament is not the opposite of faith. It is an expression of it.
Think about what lament actually requires. It requires believing that there is Someone to cry out to. That the silence is not permanent, or at least that it is worth addressing. That the relationship is real enough to hold this kind of honesty.
You do not lament to a wall. You lament to a Person.
The psalms of lament, and there are a lot of them, are not spiritual failures. They are among the most intimate prayers in the entire Bible. They show someone who trusts God enough to tell Him the truth about how they feel. That is not giving up. That is holding on with both hands.
We have lost the practice of lament and we are worse for it.
Much of modern Christian culture is very good at celebration and very uncomfortable with grief. We rush past the hard things, the losses, the unanswered prayers, the diagnoses, the relationships that did not heal, because sitting in them feels like faithlessness.
But what we do with our grief when we do not bring it to God is we carry it alone. We perform okayness on Sunday and collapse with it in private. And it gets heavier.
Lament is the practice of bringing the full weight of it to God and saying: I cannot carry this by myself and I am not going to pretend I can. That is one of the bravest prayers there is.
Identify one thing you have been carrying alone because it felt too raw or too honest to bring to God. Today, bring it to Him in prayer. Do not clean it up. Do not make it sound spiritual. Just tell Him the truth about how you feel.
- What has kept me from bringing my grief to God? What did I think would happen if I did?
- What would it look like to lament honestly, without performing faith?
- How does knowing that Jesus Himself cried out from the cross change the way I see my own cries?
- What am I carrying right now that I need to hand to God?
Is there something I have been carrying alone because bringing it to God felt like lack of faith? What would it look like to lament it honestly today, the way the psalmists did, without cleaning it up first?
God, here is the thing I have not said out loud yet. The thing I have been carrying quietly because it felt too raw to hand to You.
I am handing it to You now. Not because I have the right words. Just because I trust You with the weight of it. Hear my cry. In Jesus Name, Amen.
Crying out is not giving up. It is one of the most faithful things you can do. The psalms of lament are not spiritual failures. They are among the most intimate prayers in the entire Bible. You do not lament to a wall. You lament to a Person. And that Person is listening.