It’s the fourth Sunday of Lent today, so I’m going to talk about the fourth part of a Lament, the Entreaty.
What struck me as I looked at Laments in Psalms was that usually the psalmists are more specific in the Complaint part – telling God what’s wrong – than they are in the Entreaty part – asking God to act, rather than telling God what to do.
This is kind of the opposite of how I was taught to pray. I remember being told more than once to pray specific prayers so you could tell when God answered. But that’s not really what the psalmists do.
Mind you, they are specific about what’s wrong and about their needs. But they seem to trust God with how to solve the problems.
Here are a few examples:
Psalm 10:12—
Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
Psalm 35:22-23—
Lord, you have seen this; do not be silent.
Do not be far from me, Lord.
Awake, and rise to my defense!
Contend for me, my God and Lord.
Psalm 80:19—
Restore us, Lord God Almighty;
make your face shine on us,
that we may be saved.
Since I’ve been studying Psalms, I’ve started trying to pray this way, trying to leave the solution up to God.
In this week’s example lament, I’m going to pray about our government, using as my Entreaty five prayer requests I’ve been praying since last year, when so many valuable government programs were being cut and innocent people were being thrown into prison and so many other terrible things were happening.
I’ll include the other parts of a lament as well. To review, those are:
- Address to God
- Complaint
- Confession of Trust
- Entreaty
- Sureness of Help
- Subsequent Praise
Here’s a Lament for Leadership:
O Creator of all people, hear my prayer.
O great Peacemaker, listen to my cry.
Our government is actively harming people,
bombing an elementary school,
firing at fishing vessels and ships that were not attacking,
and leaving survivors to drown.
Masked supposedly government agents
are attacking people without warrants
and shooting innocent observers.
And our government is shutting down good things it was doing –
USAID programs that helped save lives,
firing government workers whose work made a difference
fighting cancer and other diseases,
doing unheralded work that made everyone’s lives better.
And I don’t know the half of what’s going on.
I don’t see the lives that have been affected by the new policies.
But Creator of all, you see the sparrow fall,
and you know the number of hairs on each head.
You see the devastation
and you care about our wounds and our griefs.
Comforter and Shepherd, we pray for the people harmed and being harmed
in any way by our government.
Let that harm be quickly mitigated.
Lord of hosts, we pray for the forces of good that have been stopped
that they would be restarted and revitalized.
God of our fathers and mothers, we pray that the Constitution
and the rule of law would be upheld.
Lord our Shield, we pray
that you would protect us all from further harm.
And finally, Light of the World,
we ask that evil actions by government officials
would come to light and be called to account.
O Judge of the Earth,
we do know that justice will come in the end
– may it be soon!
And may we sing for joy
with each victory of justice,
when things are put back together better
as will surely some day happen.
Show us that you care, Father of all;
let us see justice come, Lord of the universe.
Amen.