What is lament? How do I write lament?

Lament expresses grief and frustration at situation of brokenness in the world. They are honest expressions before God. The biblical psalms feature many laments, showing us that no experience in life is too difficult to be brought before God.

So, when we write a lament we come before God as an implicit act of faith, turning to God as our only source of hope and comfort. This is modeled in Psalm 42 where it says "My tears have been my food day and night." This phrase leads to a resolute statement of trust: "hope in God; for I shall again praise God."

Lament can function well as an extension to the prayer of confession, perhaps with a time of silence and a statement of our confidence in God's promise to redeem the world in Christ.

Where does lament come from?

Throughout the psalms, lament and praise are in tension. Nearly all of the psalms of lament include or end with praise. Both are authentic expressions of faith.

• Lament takes faith. The psalms of lament are full of questions because the psalmists believe in a God of unfailing love. How long, Lord, how long? Why, Lord, why? When, Lord, when? Lament makes no sense if God is indifferent or off duty. Lament makes sense only if God is a God of unfailing love.
• Lament arises from pain, but it also arises from confusion ("My God, my God, why ?") or from indignation ("I know how many are your transgressions"), or from impatience ("When ?) or from longsuffering now curdling into exasperation ("How long?).

Unbelief shakes its fist at God or dismisses God or tries to get an invasive God off its back. It's faith that laments. Faith wrestles with God because trouble and enemies and terror all are anomalies in God's world. They don't belong there.

In a world in which the King of the universe has unfailing love, these things should not happen. But there they are, and so the believer points them out to God and laments them.

These terrible things should not be.

• A young medical student in India should not be gang-raped on a public bus and beaten and left for dead. How long, Lord, how long?
• A man in Webster, New York, should not set his house on fire to lure firefighters into a trap so that he may kill them there. How long, Lord, how long?
• A gunman should not enter the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, and think in his arrogance that he has the right to destroy the lives of twenty children and six adults and everybody who loved them. How long, Lord, how long?

Anguish from pain, anguish from absorbing the whole world's sin, anguish at experiencing abandonment—Jesus might as well have said, "How long, Lord, how long?" How long? Just long enough till he could say for us sinners, "It is finished."

Kyrie Eleison

The early church had spoken or sung refrains expressing lament and confession.

Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy).
Christe eleison (Christ, have mercy).
Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy).

Trisagion

Meaning "three times," the trisagion is a refrain from the early church that can be spoken or sung. Like the Kyrie, it expresses both confession and lament:

Holy God,
holy and mighty,
holy immortal One,
have mercy on us.

Where do laments appear in the Bible?

Many readers of the psalms have noticed that laments within them are not rare. They are common and deeply meant. It seems natural to the psalmists to complain to God because, after all, who else is in charge? Whose world is this? Whose kingdom? Who is the source of overflowing love? Who remains the source of overflowing love right through all our lament?

The psalms of lament are full of questions because the psalmists believe in a "God of unfailing love" (Ps. 6). Lament makes no sense if God is indifferent or off duty. Lament makes sense only if God is a God of unfailing love.

On the cross, Jesus honored every lamenting psalmist by himself lamenting, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That's Psalm 22, and Jesus took it from his heart and memory and onto his lips.

• 2 Samuel 1:19-27, David laments
• 2 Samuel 11:26, Bathsheba laments
• Psalm 6:2–4, "My bones are shaking with terror"; deliver me, O Lord
• Psalm 13:1–2, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?"
• Psalm 22:1–2, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
• Psalm 42:3, 5–6, "My tears have been my food day and night"
• Psalm 55:17, "Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan"
• Psalm 56:1–2, "people trample on me"
• Psalm 88, "Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry"
• Jeremiah 20:7–10, 18, Jeremiah's complaint
• Amos 5:12, 16, lamenting Israel's sin
• Micah 1:8, lamenting Judah's sin
• Mark 15:34, Jesus laments from the cross
• Luke 23:27, women lament Jesus on the cross
• John 11:33–35, Jesus laments at Lazarus's death
• John 16:16, 20–21, lament turns to joy
• Acts 8:2, lament over Stephen's death