Crucible of Lament

      Crucible of Lament

  In today’s world, it is often difficult to summon optimism. Bad news

  swirls around us blowing our hopes and dreams like leaves in the fall

  wind. In this gale, we often find it hard to cling to hope and to a sense

  that the future will be a bright one. In general, I see myself as an

  optimistic person. I try to find the bright side of bad situations, and I

  work hard to walk the extra mile to give others the benefit of the doubt

  in personal relationships. I am not a naïve optimist like the character

  Pangloss in Voltaire’s biting satire Candide. When it is clear the ship is

  sinking, I don’t believe everything will be alright nor do I believe, as

  Pangloss would, that the sinking ship is the best thing that could happen

  to me. I do all that I can to bail out the rising water, even as I wrestle

  against the fear and anxiety that accompanies impending disaster!

  Yet despite my generally optimistic attitude and outlook, there are times

  when sadness overwhelms me. It may be a growing storm of weary longing or

  a tide of lonely isolation that sweeps over me, drowning me with a dolor

  that submerges my hope. Sometimes it occurs when I think about the aging

  process and our hopeless fight against it. Sometimes it occurs when I am

  in the grocery line, looking at the baggers and clerks who wonder if this

  is all they will ever do for work. Oftentimes, it occurs when I cannot see

  the good through all the violence and evil that oppresses the world and

  its people. I can easily become overwhelmed by the numbers of people who

  are forgotten by our society — the last, the least, and the lost among us

  — and wonder who is there to help and to save them from drowning.

  It is in these times that I befriend lament. And I take great comfort in

  the loud cries and mourning that have echoed throughout time and history

  as captured in the poems, songs, and statements of lament. Indeed, a great

  portion of the Hebrew Scriptures comes in the form of lament, both

  individual and communal lament. The Psalms, as the hymnal of Israel,

  record the deepest cries of agony, anger, confusion, disorientation,

  sorrow, grief, and protest. In so doing, they express hope that the God

  who delivered them in the exodus from Egypt, would once again deliver by

  listening and responding to their lament.(1)  The prophets of Israel, who

  cry out in times of exile, present some of the most heart - wrenching

  cries to God in times of deep sorrow and distress. One can hear the

  anguish in Jeremiah’s cry, “Why has my pain been perpetual and my wound

  incurable, refusing to be healed? Will God indeed be to me like a

  deceptive stream with water that is unreliable?” (Jeremiah 15:18). In

  addition, Jeremiah cries out on behalf of the people of Judah: “Harvest is

  past, summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the brokenness of the

  daughter of my people I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me.

  Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not

  the health of the daughter of my people been restored?” (Jeremiah 8:20-

  22).

  As I listen to Jeremiah’s cries, I recognize that they arise out of a deep

  love for the very people he often had to speak against. As Abraham Joshua

  Heschel notes, “[Jeremiah] was a person overwhelmed by sympathy for God

  and sympathy for man. Standing before the people he pleaded for God.

  Standing before God he pleaded for his people.”(2) In this same tradition,

  Jesus cried out with deep longing about the people in his own day, “If you

  had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace” (Luke

  19:42). It is more than appropriate for us to weep and lament over the

  terrible condition of the world — a condition that all too often, we

  participate in and condone.

  Many face realities in life that feel completely overwhelming: death, and

  loss, poverty, hunger, homelessness, job loss or under-employment,

  relational disruption. Lament seems the only appropriate response for

  those who find themselves on the losing end of things, or who through no

  fault of their own always find themselves in last place or left behind.

  Lament arises from looking honestly at these realities for what they are,

  and wishing for something else.

  Yet it has been said that “the cry of pain is our deepest acknowledgment

  that we are not home.” The author continues, “We are divided from our own

  body; our own deepest desires; our dearest relationships. We are separated

  and long for utter restoration. It is the cry of pain that initiates the

  search to ask God, ‘What are you doing?’ It is this element of a lament

  that has the potential to change the heart.”(3) If this is true, then the

  overwhelming sorrow or feelings of bitterness over having to deal with

  what feels like more than one’s share of the harsh yet inevitable

  realities of life are, in fact, the crucible for real change. The same

  waters of despair that seek to drown and overwhelm are the waters of

  cleansing. Therefore, let the tears flow! The writers of Scripture give

  witness to the overwhelming compassion of God in the midst of grief: “For

  if [the LORD] causes grief, then He will have compassion according to his

  abundant loving kindness.”(4) Perhaps, as we remember the one who was

  described as a “man of sorrows” who was “acquainted with grief,” lament

  offers a crucible in which we might experience a better compassion and

  care. Indeed, lament may yet have its own way of transformation.