I've Been Weeping Alot Lately

An acquaintance told me awhile back that I was one of the most optimistic persons they have ever met. And when I asked them why they thought that, she said that I seem to always find the bright side of any bad circumstance or news. Honestly, I don't see myself much in that way, although I can identify with Bettyann when she says, she's not real concerned about the world because she's read the back of the Book. I do think of myself, more often than not, trying to go the extra mile in giving others the benefit of the doubt in personal relationships. In taking a close visual I don't believe it's the same kind of optimism like Pangloss in Voltaire's biting satire in one of the books I have read recently; Candide. When I recognize a sinking ship, I don't believe everything will immediately "work out," or believe, like Pangloss, that the sinking ship is the best thing that could happen to me, just because I am a positive thinker.  I immediately grab a bucket and start bailing water, as I fight against the fear and anxiety that I have experienced in past impending disasters.

Because confession is "great" for my soul, I say; no matter how optimistic or positive I am most of the time I still get overwhelmed by sadness, sometimes. It may be thunderheads forecasting a tremendous storm of weary longing or a ripe tide of bitterness that I realize is sweeping me from the shoreline, trying to drown me despite my frantic strokes of hope. It just happen a few weeks ago when one of my in-laws was in a death threatening heart and kidney failure.  He's only a couple of years older than me. As I concluded my prayer for him and my son-in-law I began thinking about the aging process and my hopeless fight against it. I attended Gib's memorial service yesterday. Sometimes it occurs when I am in the hardware checkout line, looking at the clerks who wonder if this is all they will ever do for work. Oftentimes, it occurs when I cannot see much good through all the violence and evil that oppresses this world and its five active generations. I grieve for those who are forgotten by their church world—the last, the least, and the lost—and wonder who has been called to help and to save them from drowning.

It is in these times that of late I've been befriending "lament." Of late I've been taking more and more 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. I'm finding it more and more, personally intriguing because of the expression of faith in the God who would listen and respond to these emotional outpourings. I found some time ago that the prophets of Israel, as well, 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?" 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?

As I sit with Jeremiah's and listen to him cry , I recognize those cries are arising out of a deep love for the very people he often had to speak against. In Abraham Heschels', The Prophets he writes: "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." I guess more often, now in the past few years, my overwhelming sadness arises when I look out upon a church world that seems to love their own selfish desires than looking out for all people.  I grieve over self-imposed predicaments, bad choices, and selfish indulgences. Bill, are you realizing your place in this church world of predicament, darkness, and selfishness? Remember it was Jesus, that said, with tears in Luke 19: "If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace." It's important that I continue to weep and lament over the sins of the world, and churches—also the sin that I, too, participate in and condone.

And....... beyond this, there are simply some realities in life that at times are overwhelming: the inevitability of aging, death, and loss, poverty, homelessness, relational disruption, and many others. I grieve over those who find themselves on the losing end of things, who through no fault of their own always find themselves in last place or left behind. God give me more grace to lament for those who seem to desire to purposefully put themselves under. I'm learning from these passages that genuine lamenting arises from the despair of looking honestly at these realities for what they are, and wishing for something else. It is the despair that arises from not knowing what can be done or how to overcome.

On the other hand, Dan Allender makes a point in "Hidden Hope in Lament." He says: "the cry of pain is our deepest acknowledgment that we are not home." He 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." I'm thinking, If this is true, then sometimes my overwhelming sorrow, my feelings of bitterness over some of the harsh or inevitable realities of life are, in fact, the crucible for real change.

Father, God, than You for teaching me these past couple of weeks that the same waters of despair that seek to drown and overwhelm me are the waters of cleansing. So I cry out with the author of Lamentations and let the tears flow, "For if the LORD causes grief, then He will have
compassion according to his abundant lovingkindness." As your child who desires to walk with the "Man of sorrows" who was "acquainted with grief," may lament have its way of bittersweet transformation the rest of my old age. Amen.