I’m excited! This coming Saturday, I’m going to be leading a workshop, “Finding Hope Through Lament,” at my church’s women’s retreat. It’s a breakout session of forty minutes each, and I’ll lead two sessions of up to 15 people each, so nice small groups. I’ll be taking the group through writing their own laments using the form of a lament found in Psalms. I’ve outlined this in my not-yet-published book, Praying with the Psalmists, on my website prayingwiththepsalmists.com, and here in my Sonderjourneys blog.
The form comes from the one my Psalms professor from Biola University gave us back in the 80s. I changed the wording a bit to turn it into an acronym I could remember:
A – Address to God
C – Complaint
C – Confession of Trust
E – Entreaty
S – Sureness of Help
S – Subsequent Praise
But you know what? It’s hard to find a Lament in the book of Psalms that includes all the parts in that order and is short enough to list as an example. In fact, the only one I can come up with is Psalm 54, and it flips the two S’s at the end. There are two verses for the Address to God, then one verse for each part:
Save me, O God, by your name;
vindicate me by your might.
Hear my prayer, O God;
listen to the words of my mouth.Arrogant foes are attacking me;
ruthless people are trying to kill me –
people without regard for God.Surely God is my help;
the Lord is the one who sustains me.Let evil recoil on those who slander me;
in your faithfulness destroy them.I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you;
I will praise your name, Lord, for it is good.
You have delivered me from all my troubles,
and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes.
However, despite the difficulties in finding individual Psalms that fit the form precisely, I do maintain that if you read through the Laments, you will find these elements over and over again.
And though the biblical Laments only loosely follow the form, if we follow the form, we can write our own laments.
But we can absolutely do like the psalmists and only follow loosely! It’s not a prescription. It’s an idea, a pattern, for a way to pray that doesn’t hold back from negative emotions.
As an experiment, I’m going to try writing a lament as short as this Example Psalm, Psalm 54, and try for two lines per part. What’s heavy on my mind right now is Greenland and the potential for war with Europe.
Hear my prayer, O Lord;
answer my cry, my Shepherd.The president of the United States is threatening to attack Greenland;
and no one in the world knows how to stop him.I believe that “the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord.”
I believe that you are the greater power.Rise and act, Lord of hosts!
Ultimate peacemaker, smother the fires of war
in hearts and minds on every side.
Let there be peace on earth;
let our alliances continue.Father and Mother of us all, I believe that you hear the cries of your people.
I believe that you will help as we cry out to you.And I look forward to the day when I will visit Europe again,
praising you for peace between our nations.
May I never take it for granted again.
There – not the best lament I’ve ever written. Honestly? It’s hard to write the Sureness of Help section when I’m honestly not sure what the outcome will be. Will God not stop the destructive path our leader is taking, maybe to finally open the eyes of his followers? I simply don’t know. But I do believe that God hears our prayers. And I do believe that God will help those who cry out to him. And I hope – oh so much – that there will not be a new war with Europe.