Of Lament and Longing

 

Thursday, June 24, 2021

From the depths of despair, O Lord, I call for your help.  Hear my cry, O Lord.  Pay attention to my prayer.  Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you.  I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him.  I have put my hope in his word.  I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn, yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.  O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is unfailing love.  His redemption overflows.  He himself will redeem Israel from every kind of sin.  Psalm 130

It is a well-known fact that we come into this world crying-out in objection to the change of a comfortable womb to the rude awakening of a birth canal and a smack on the backside.  A book I’m savoring at the moment has this in the first chapter:  Every human being has the same opening story.  Life begins with tears.  It’s simply a part of what it means to be human – to cry is human.[1] 

The Psalmist writes to all the Jewish pilgrims of the land as they head to Jerusalem to worship.  He records the deep lament of his own heart as an encouragement to those who come after him to follow his example of crying-out.  But this crying-out is not just wailing in pain; rather it is pain with purpose.  The purpose draws our longing into looking…for God.  The pure fact at the base of our being is that we long for God, and it compels us to search for Him.  

As the ancient church father Augustine has it, we are born with a God-sized hole in our heart (inner being), and cannot be at rest until that void is filled.

The Psalmist takes us deeper than Augustine’s hole-in-the-heart; he shows us the pathway that leads to what to do about that longing – how to open the heart by placing our hope in the Lord even before we understand Him.  The Psalmist proclaims the forgiveness of the Lord for our sins.  This is the hole-in-the-heart problem that every human understands innately, without any prompting from parents, religion, or the culture into which we’re born.  We KNOW we’re sinners because we feel the hole separating us from every part of our Creator, in whose image we were made.  And we KNOW something must be done about that, otherwise the possibilities are only two – we die in shame, or go insane. 

But, if we are to address the problem, God gives us faith that redemption from our sin comes from the unfailing love and mercy of God…Who forgives.  To place our hope and trust in God’s covenant love is the Psalmist’s solution.

If you look for any other solution you will come up dry.  Lament is different than being a victim, or (on the other end of the spectrum) an arrogant mover and shaker victimizer of others, or anything else in-between or different.  Rather, lament is facing the fact that the hole does exist, and it is yours, chosen when you decided to take your will above anything God said. 

God will forgive that, but only when we fully place our hope in Him, and cry-out to Him in faith for that forgiveness.

For You Today

For those who will not lament over the hole-in-the-heart which separates them from God, there is no hope.  But for those who will lament, and seek, and knock, and ask…the door of mercy will swing wide-open.  And, inside God’s place, beyond the door of mercy, there is a mansion of joy!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!   

[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

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[1] Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds Deep Mercy (2019, Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois), 25