Those Who Weep
A Lenten Reflection
by Melissa Lien
Unless we make space for grief, we cannot know the depths of the love of God, the healing God wrings from pain, the way grieving yields wisdom, comfort, even joy.If we do not make time for grief, it will not simply disappear. Grief is stubborn. It will make itself heard or we will die trying to silence it. If we don’t face it directly it comes out sideways, in ways that aren’t recognizable as grief: explosive anger, uncontrollable anxiety, compulsive shallowness, brooding bitterness, unchecked addiction. Grief is a ghost that can’t be put to rest until its purpose has been fulfilled.
~ Tish Harrison Warren, Prayers in the Night
Most of us wouldn’t choose sadness when happiness seems so within reach. I would imagine that your instincts are, like mine, to avoid pain and suffering if at all possible. Why do we seem alarmed when difficulties arise in our lives or something has gone wrong? If 1/3 of the Psalms are laments— prayers bringing our hard things to God— should we be surprised if every few days are hard or that we’re often sad with the brokenness around us and in us? Could you imagine with me what weeping might do to relieve the grief we are carrying around daily in our bodies?
During this season of Lent, I invite you to take some time to grieve, or lament, the difficulties you are experiencing. Borrow the words of the Psalms to express the deep hurt and anger you have not shared with anyone. What would it look like to let Jesus carry the weight of sadness and pain for a time? Can you imagine the relief and joy that might come in the morning?
If Jesus can do this in your life, what would it look like for Him to move around us in a city? Imagine what a gospel-believing, hope-filling presence our church can be in the San Gabriel Valley if we all experienced Jesus carrying our sadness and healing our grief. My prayer has been that our church, The Way, would be a home to weary and wounded souls looking for a place, or Someone, to bear their grief.
Tish Harrison Warren beautifully expresses how a church can help a grieving world: The church’s prophetic witness to an outrage culture is to be a people who know how to weep together at the pain and injustice in the world and at the reality of our own sin and brokenness. We must learn to listen to the fear and sadness underneath the anger that people spew….To walk faithfully through this dark world, we need to grieve our losses, however tragic, however common. We need to weep with those who weep. Our task is to take up practices where we name, with utter honesty, the brokenness of the world and the promises of what’s to come.
My prayer for my heart and yours is that we would bring our ugly hurt and sadness to Jesus and let Him comfort and heal us. Then would we overflow with the hope and joy of Jesus’ resurrection and would it spill on our neighbors and our city.
God’s Invitation to You:
I’ve compiled some Psalms of Lament & Praise for you to use to express your broken heart and sadness.
Try writing a Lament Prayer: (see Psalm 13 example below)
Turn to God: Remember how you have experienced Him in the past. Who is he to you now?
Complain: Name your laments, honesty and specifically. Start with “Lord, I’m not okay with…”
Request: Name what you want to be restored, how you want Him to fix what’s broken.
Trust: Can you pivot to praising Him even in the darkness? Where can you express gratitude for what He has done? What promises of God can you hold onto?
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Psalm 13