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Holy Darkness…
Lamentations
September 4, 2011

Several months ago, my sister, Carol, called to ask me to pray for one of her closest friends, Denise, and her family.

Denise's son Tyler, his wife Nicole, her daughter Amber and Amber's soon to be fiancé Luke, were driving from Tucson to California for the weekend. Tyler and Nicole had been married just a little over a year. They were in the back seat of the car. Tyler's sister Amber was in the front seat with her boyfriend Luke, who was driving.

Luke had been planning a romantic surprise proposal of marriage to take place on the California coast. Along with all of his careful planning, he had borrowed his parent's car, which was larger, safer, and more comfortable for long distance driving.

In a split second everything changed. On the road only a couple hours, the front tire blew and the car flipped and rolled. All of them had their seat belts on, but for some unknown reason Tyler was ejected from the vehicle due to a faulty seat belt. He was instantly killed. No one else in the car was injured.

Tyler was a young man with a heart for God and a desire to make a difference in the world. He was a new husband, a beloved son, a brother, a successful architect with a brilliant future, here one minute, then gone the next.

At times like these we often ask, "WHY?" How could a loving God allow such a thing to happen? It makes no sense. Why Tyler's seatbelt, why this, why that? Why do people suffer in these ways?

My sister goes and sits with Denise at least once a week allowing her the prayerful space of grieving the loss of her son. There are often few words spoken. They simply sit together and Carol helps to carry the suffering of this grieving mother. Carol says they cry, pray, or share stories but mostly she just sits there and holds her hand.

I have learned through the years as a pastor, a mother, and a friend, that being fully present is the best way to support and love people when they are hurting. Trying to come up with the why of their suffering (as if that were possible) is probably our single most common blunder. Telling someone that the intensity of their loss will pass, while it is true, is NOT what is happening in that moment for the person, and generally is not helpful.

Listening is usually what is needed most. Merely sitting with someone and not trying to fix them acknowledges the holiness of their sorrow. Jewish people call this "sitting Shiva." It takes courage to do this. We might feel helpless or uncomfortable when someone is in the depths of despair.

There is no prescribed length of time in which someone mourns a loss. It takes as long as it takes. In my times of mourning I am so grateful for the patient friends and family who have allowed me the space of lament and not tried to fix me or preach to me.

I think that we would do well to learn to pray the prayer of lament, to remember that our tears are holy and God given. To name ours, or another's suffering and not minimize it by trying to explain it, or compare it to someone else's far worse plight. I think we need to make space for silence, for wailing and tears, for anger, disappointment, brokenness, and confusion. I wonder if giving space for lament might not be the most powerful way in which we minister to one another in our suffering.

There is no end to the list of those who are suffering in the world. We all have been touched in some way by suffering, some unexpected tragedy, death, illness, financial hardship, or broken relationship. Healing can be slow in coming but is usually prolonged when it is not faced, acknowledged, or consciously grieved. People run from pain of all kinds and find all manner of ways to cope. Acknowledging our suffering is healthy; avoiding it is not, even though it is fully human to do so.

Jesus modeled this for us so beautifully in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane before his death. When you read this prayer you feel his resistance and then his eventual surrender. And then there are his words of lament from the cross, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus showed us how to surrender to suffering trusting that his suffering could be redemptive. Death didn't have the last word.

I find the teaching of Quaker Parker Palmer insightful when he talks about suffering as the tragic gap. The gap between what is, and what could or should be. This is where much of life happens. We suffer when we resist what is…We need to learn to stand in this tragic gap and grieve it, to lament it and then to remain hopeful that suffering can become redemptive as we lean into it and surrender to it and allow it to teach us.

More and more I see that we are not lacking in faith when we are honest with what we feel, when we acknowledge our pain, and let it be what it is, and move through the stages of our grief and loss. This is the path to healing, to transformation, to the glorious place where God can redeem our pain and use it in ways beyond imagining.

The Hebrew book of Lamentations is a perfect description of what suffering and loss feel like. It is a short book, only 5 chapters long and it gives Biblical witness to the reality that to be human is to suffer. The writer neither explains suffering nor offers a program for eliminating it but he describes sitting in the mess of what is and lamenting it.

Lamentations was written during the fall and exile of Jerusalem in around 587 B.C. In the first three chapters the writer describes what has taken place. He is beside himself with grief and sadness and he is blaming God big time for what has happened. He feels shame for how rebellious his people have been and believes God is judging them for what they have done. I wonder if any of us ever felt that?

He writes: "Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the Lord inflicted on the day of his fierce anger. For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my courage; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed."

The Hebrew writer weaves in and out of despair to hope, hope to despair. He relives the pain over and over again. He wants revenge. He feels abandoned. He is joyless. How like suffering this is. However, Lamentations insists that God enters our suffering and is companion to our suffering when he writes:

"But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him." Lamentations 3:21-24

From my own journey I have found that there are beautiful gifts that inevitably show up in the midst of suffering and that God can and will transform us in the process.

We are approaching the 10th anniversary of what has been coined as 9/11, a tragic time in our country's history that shook us to the core, as we realized a terrorist attack could actually be targeted directly at us in such a devastating way. Those images of the attacks will remain in our minds forever. Many things have changed since then and not all of them good. Today we have a choice to be transformed by this event by holding forgiveness in our heart, by loving rather than hating, by trusting rather than fearing. We can allow God to transform us and empower us to serve others rather than to withdraw into our small world of fear and hopelessness. God always gives us the freedom to choose. Let's choose to bring heaven to earth in the ways in which we support one another on life's journey and all that it brings.

Maybe you are the one suffering right now and you need to give yourself permission to grieve, or maybe you are being nudged to walk with someone who is suffering. Can you make space in your companionship with this person for lament?

May God speak to our hearts in the stillness.