Skip to main content

Hymns of Lament

Hymns and songs of praise are some of the most powerful, transformative, and beautiful things we can experience. There are many that encourage us, motivate us, and help us to encounter Christ in worship and reflection. When our hymns are theologically sound, God centered, and musically pleasing there is almost no better way to learn theology and worship.

There is, however, one area in particular where I believe our hymns and songs are lacking. When we look at the book of Psalms we see psalms of praise, thanksgiving, and joy but we also see another type of psalm rather frequently. These are psalms of sadness, grief, and anguish. These are psalms of lament.

Out of 150 psalms 42 are psalms of lament, both individual and communal. That is almost one third of all the psalms in the Bible. The reason why is simple; grief, pain, and loss are a constant part of human life. Sadness, depression, and doubt are just as much a part of living as happiness, thanksgiving, and celebration. The book of Psalms reflects this reality, but our hymnals and song books don't.

We modern Christians are ill equipped for lament. We tend to see mourning and grief as a thing best avoided at all costs rather than a normal and important part of life and spirituality. So, we avoid it both in our congregations and individual lives. When grief strikes we often don't know what to do. Sure we know how to cook meals, help with chores, and do other noble tasks of service, but we often don't know how to be quiet and mourn with those who mourn.

Sometimes even our attempts at service are merely us trying to stay busy and avoid the grief and pain.

Looking through our hymnals and song books we see many different types of songs. We see songs of thanksgiving, praise, meditation, remembrance, and hope. We don't see very many songs of lament, pain, and grief, songs that vividly express our sorrows and anguish.

The book of Psalms, as well as Lamentations, teaches us that it is OK and even spiritually necessary to confront, embrace, and express our pain. We do not offend God when in our darkest moments of sorrow we ask hard questions. We won't scare Christ off with raw, emotional honesty about what we are feeling. Remember, Christ felt it too and in his pain he quoted Psalm 22.

Lament is something I need to learn to do as well. I am just a beginner and probably always will be one. Following Jesus does not mean that everything is going to be OK every day. In fact, Jesus told us that things wouldn't be. Following Jesus does not mean that we have to just "sing and be happy" and pretend that our grief and pain aren't really as deep and cutting as they are. Just because we have a strong hope in the future and in God doesn't mean the sorrow is lessened, it means it isn't pointless.

I encourage you to lament. Go to the book of Psalms and find a lament. Read it out loud. Let the words ring in the air. To any songwriters out there, perhaps turn some of these psalms into hymns or even write your own using them as a guide. Do not fear grief or sorrow or anguish, for Christ is with you there.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We Need More Images

What is your favorite way to describe God? Is there a particular name of God in scripture that you are drawn to? What images and pictures come to mind when you think of God? These are questions I don't think we ask often enough. We all have an image of God in our heads that we work with. It may not be a literal picture, though it might be, but ideas and concepts we tend to associate with who God is. Some of those images and associations may come from the Bible, but some may not. These things are influenced by our upbringing, Bible reading habits, personalities, relationships, culture, and more. The way we picture God has a dramatic impact on the way we live our lives. For example, if the primary idea you have of God is "Healer," when you hear or read that you are made in God's image you will likely feel called to heal, be it physical ailments or spiritual wounds. But, if your primary image of God is "Judge," that changes things. You very likely might tend to...

Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, the day that we are supposed to celebrate all the things we are thankful for. It is a time of family reunions, football, and turkey eating. I sincerely pray that each and every one of you has a good day today. I'll admit that being thankful has not been easy for me this year. As pretty much all of you know, my mother passed away December of last year. Though she had been in the hospital for months, we were not expecting it. In fact I was sure she would be finally able to come home within a matter of weeks. Instead she peacefully passed on into the arms of Jesus, whom she loved more dearly than anyone else. As you can imagine, the entire family was heart broken. After what can easily be described as the worst Christmas ever, I returned to home to Illinois. It was here that I finally broke down. I spent the next months doing everything except being thankful. I cursed God, wept, screamed, begged to have her back, and was generally not the nicest person to be...

The Early Middle Ages: Historical Friday

The next segment of history that we are going to overview is the Early Middle Ages. This dates roughly from AD 450 to AD 1100. This is intended to be a very general overview. There are probably historians that would classify some other time period as the "Early Middle Ages" or a more specific time period. For our purposes this will cover the aforementioned time period. This was a very influential period in the history of Christianity. It saw the formation of what we now call the Roman Catholic Church and its separation from what we would now call the Eastern Orthodox Church. Before this time there was only ONE church. There weren't different denominations or groups. It is hard for us to think about in our modern context, but there was a time when Christianity was visibly unified. Brief History The first major thing to happen during this time period is the remaining three ecumenical councils. We discussed the first four several weeks ago. These councils discussed va...