Lamentation

In her book The Year of Magical Thinking, author Joan Didion tries to make sense of her world after the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Didion marvels at the capacity of grief "to derange the mind," that is, to throw its victims into a mode of irrationality. They cannot think and live as though the person they loved is really dead. Surely there has been some mistake of diagnosis or identity "I was thinking as small children think," she writes, "as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome."

One day Didion was clearing the shelves of her husband's clothes, putting them in stacks to give away to thrift shops. But she couldn't bring herself to give away his shoes. "I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return."

More people point to the problem of evil and suffering as their reason for not believing in God than any other—it is not merely a problem, it is the problem. A Barna poll asked, "If you could ask God only one question and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask?" The most common response was, "Why is there pain and suffering in the world?"

John Stott said, "The fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith, and has been in every generation. Its distribution and degree appear to be entirely random and therefore unfair. Sensitive spirits ask if it can possibly be reconciled with God's justice and love."

Richard Swinburne, writing in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, says the problem of evil is "the most powerful objection to traditional theism." Ronald Nash writes, "Objections to theism come and go. … But every philosopher I know believes that the most serious challenge to theism was, is, and will continue to be the problem of evil."

You will not get far in a conversation with someone who rejects the Christian faith before the problem of evil is raised. Pulled out like the ultimate trump card, it's supposed to silence believers and prove that the all-good and all-powerful God of the Bible doesn't exist.

Rick and Kay Warren's son Matthew committed suicide at the age of 27 after a long struggle with mental illness. About a year after his death, Kay Warren posted the following advice on her Facebook page:

The truest friends and "helpers" are those who wait for the griever to emerge from the darkness that swallowed them alive without growing afraid, anxious or impatient. They don't pressure their friend to be the old familiar person they're used to; they're willing to accept that things are different, embrace the now-scarred one they love, and are confident that their compassionate, non-demanding presence is the surest expression of God's mercy to their suffering friend. They're ok with messy and slow and few answers … .and they never say "Move on."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Grief; Depression; Death; (2) Mother's Day; Infertility—This could also be an excellent quote on Mother's Day for those who are grieving the loss of a mother or for couples who are grieving the inability to have a child.

A baby's cry just sounds like any other baby cry, right? Actually, an article in The Wall Street Journal reports that new medical research is showing that each newborn's cry can signal a lot more than just if she is hungry or tired. Subtle differences in cry characteristics can provide important clues on how hospitals should treat babies. Doctors at Brown University have also devised a computer program to help analyze a baby's cries. This program breaks down cries into 12.5-millisecond frames and measures cry factors like pitch, volume, and "voicing," which refers to how clear the cry sound is.

One of the doctors quoted in the article said, "We can start right at birth. The analysis of crying can tell you if there's something wrong with the baby's nervous system even in the absence of routine signs on physical and neurological exams." Research has shown that even healthy babies can have cries that indicate something is wrong with the central nervous system. In the future, researchers hope that cry analysis for newborns may help doctors detect problems and start treatment earlier.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Prayer; Trouble; Help from God—The Bible often reminds us that God hears the cries of our heart and knows the exact condition of our soul. (2) God's Omniscience; Jesus, our high priest—God knows our prayer requests before we ask.

The actor Tim Allen's father died when Allen was 11 years old. A drunk driver crashed into their car as his dad was driving home from a college football game. Nearly 50 years later, Allen still claims that his father's death "changed everything forever." In a recent (2012) interview he said,

Part of me still doesn't trust that everything will work out all right. I knew my father was dead, but I was never satisfied with why he was dead. I wanted answers that minute from God. "Do you think this is funny? Do you think this is necessary?" And I've had a tumultuous relationship with my creator ever since.

The British novelist Julian Barnes tried to capture the loneliness of what he calls "grief-work." After thirty years of marriage, his wife Pat died from a brain tumor. Barnes was struck by how many of his closest friends didn't know how to talk honestly about his grief. Barnes said, "Some friends are as scared of grief as they are of death; they avoid you as if they fear infection." One friend advised him to get a dog. Some other friends suggested that he go on a long vacation. Barely a week after his wife's funeral, another friend cheerily asked, "So, what are you up to? Are you going on walking holidays?"

Barnes also describes the friends who can't even bring themselves to mention his wife's name. He calls them "the Silent Ones." Barnes writes:

I remember a dinner conversation in a restaurant with three married friends …. Each had known her for many years …. I mentioned her name; no one picked it up. I did it again, and again nothing. Perhaps the third time I was deliberately trying to provoke …. Afraid to touch her name, they denied her thrice, and I thought the worse of them for it.

Barnes imagines that these Silent Ones really want to say, "Your grief is an embarrassment. We're just waiting for it to pass. And, by the way, you're less interesting without her."

After living as a quadriplegic for 45 years, Joni Eareckson Tada reflected on the diving accident that changed her life. As a 14-year-old, Joni had embraced Jesus as her savior, but in her words she had "confused the abundant Christian life with the great American dream." Joni said:

I was a Christian and would lose weight, get good grades, get voted captain of the hockey team, go to college, marry a wonderful man who made $250,000 a year, and we'd have 2.5 children. It was me focused: What can God do for me? I almost thought that I had done God a great big favor by accepting Jesus …. [And my boyfriend and I] were doing some things together that we wrong.

In April 1967, I came home from a sordid Friday night date … and cried, "Oh God … I'm staining your reputation by saying I'm a Christian, yet doing one thing Friday night and another Sunday morning. I'm a hypocrite …. I want you to change my life … Please do something in my life that will jerk it right side up because I'm making a mess of the Christian faith in my life and I don't want that. I want to glorify you." Then I had the diving accident about three months later.

Immediately after the accident, Joni told God, "You'll never be trusted with another of my prayers." But after struggling with anguish and anger Joni said, "I prayed one short prayer that changed my life: 'Oh God, if I can't die, show me how to live.' That was probably the most powerful prayer I had ever prayed."

Pastor Sinclair Ferguson offered the following personal story to illustrate the Spirit's involvement in our prayer life:

When I was a little boy, I used to be taken in the summer to the Northern coast of Scotland to see my mother's relatives. My mother had a cousin who had been grievously ill when he was just recently married at the age of 21, and he had become absolutely paralyzed. There was only one thing he could do with his body: he could move his head a bit, and if they put a cup of tea in his hand he could move the tea, and he could sip the tea. He used to sit in a wheelchair and from time to time he would make guttural noises: "Uuuuh … Uuuuh … Uuuuh." And after I got over the fright, the fear of the unknown, and the strange, I began to notice that every time these groans came from him, the woman he had married when he was 21 would appear by some, it seemed, mystical gift of interpretation, and give him exactly what he wanted.

That's how we are sometimes, we're paralyzed, and we don't know how to pray. And in this world, sometimes to this world, we seem insignificant and unimportant and to be passed by, and to be despised. But the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

After witnessing firsthand the devastating effects of civil war, oppressive regimes, and natural disasters, Palmer Chichen has observed that the Hebrew people have a special way of coming together to help people deal with pain, loss, and grief. He writes:

They call it shiva (which means seven, or sits of seven). When there is a death, the closest family members come together: the father and mother, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and spouses. They come together and sit. But they don't sit alone: all their friends and family come and sit with them. They sit until the healing begins. They sit because they want you to know you're not alone in your sorrow.

They sit together for seven days, and here's what I love about the seventh day—everyone in the community comes on the seventh day, and they walk with them around the block. The subtle message is, You can begin to live again. We know you hurt, and we hurt with you, but you can heal over.

In his talk entitled "The Sense of an Ending," Jeremy Begbie tells a story about attending a worship service in a poor South African township.

I was told, immediately before the service, that a house around the corner had just been burned to the ground because the man who lived there was a suspected thief. A week before that, a tornado had cut through the township, ripping apart fifty homes; five people had been killed. And then I was told that the very night before, a gang hounded down a fourteen-year-old, a member of the church's Sunday school, and stabbed him to death.

The pastor began his opening prayer: "Lord, you are the Creator and the Sovereign, but why did the wind come like a snake and tear our roofs off? Why did a mob cut short the life of one of our own children, when he had everything to live for? Over and over again, Lord, we are in the midst of death."

As he spoke, the congregation responded with a dreadful sighing and groaning. And then, once he finished his prayer, very slowly, the whole congregation began to sing, at first very quietly, then louder. They sang and they sang, song after song of praise—praise to a God who in Jesus had plunged into the very worst to give us a promise of an ending beyond all imagining. The singing gave the congregation a foretaste of the end.

Christian hope isn't about looking around at the state of things now and trying to imagine where it's all going. It's not about trying to calculate the future from the present. It's about breathing now the fresh air of the ending, tasting the spices and sipping the wine of the feast to come.

God must think it's okay for us to gripe--there are more lament psalms than any other kind in the Old Testament.