The Pastor Who Learned to Pray by Watching Her World Fall Apart

So tell me more about lament, because if you're familiar

at all with the Bible, there's the book of Lamentations.

We know, I knew enough to know it's a sad-ish word.

But I didn't know the depth of the word.

So tell me about what lamenting is.

Lamenting is kind of what I just said.

It is acknowledging the grief I feel over something, naming it and naming it to God.

So naming it to yourself, but bringing it to God.

I love that we have a God that allows us to be angry with him, to be angry about circumstances, to just spit rocks, whatever we need to do.

And he is big enough and strong enough and loving enough that he will handle that and he will stick around for it.

Yeah.

And so lamenting is naming those things.

Like if you read Lamentations, Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations, and he is grieving what has happened to Jerusalem.

He is grieving 40 years of prophetic ministry where he spoke God's word to people, imploring them, begging them to turn their hearts back to God and love each other and treat one another with respect and dignity, the way God calls us to, and they wouldn't listen.

And so now they find themselves in a place of national disaster.

And he's grieving hard hearts.

He's grieving the loss of identity.

He's grieving the destruction of a beloved city.

All of that, he's grieving it.

But some of his lamenting and naming of that is, sounds like he's putting that all on god you know and it's like you read those things and you see is this allowed how is he not gonna get struck down for saying such a thing how dare he and and then he also okay he's got that out and then if you read limitations three it's like the next breath is but you know what i've lost all this inheritance i thought i had And all of these things, but Lord, you're my inheritance.

And there's

that other element to lament, right? Where it's like a grief with hope and a grief with knowing where your foundation is, that God gives you that safe place to complain.

Yeah.

And complain is a completely legitimate word to use for lament.

It includes complaint.