Lament - Complaining Faithfully to God
Posted on
Our 2021 Lenten Series focused on the lament psalms - prayers offered to a faithful and merciful God in the sure hope of response. These are a few of the participants' personal psalms of lament.
Psalm 2021 – Steve Clark
1 My God, my Lord, have you forsaken us?
Why does this Pandemic continue to ravage this world?
2 O God, I have prayed many times for relief from this scourge.
Are you not listening to my supplications?
3 You are the Creator, God, through you all things were made.
Both all we see, and all we cannot see.
- With this virus, you have created something unseen,
but we clearly see the suffering and death it hath wrought.
- With your life-giving power, you can choose what to create.
Why, Lord, have you chosen to create viruses?
- I am not worthy to question you, Lord.
Yet, here I am, asking why do you not end our misery?
- This Pandemic has caused millions of deaths.
Many more millions have suffered debilitating illnesses.
- Lord, I am thankful my health has been spared.
Even so, I remain separated from friends and family members.
- How I yearn to hug my children and grandchildren!
How I long to trash the masks I have worn on my face!
- How I long to sit in a pew at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church!
How I desire to partake of the bread and the wine!
- And so I beseech thee once again, O Holy One,
to rescue your people from this worldwide plague.
- In my prayers I will continue to praise you, Lord.
For you are my strength and my salvation.
Psalm of Lament – Sanford Eberly
O God of creation and song,
always am I praising you with my voice.
Please hear the supplications of my heart
and send your Holy Spirit to guide.
For you are a loving God,
slow to anger;
quick to answer prayers.
You send the sun and the rain;
filling the rivers and streams,
that cleanse and renew the earth.
Why..... is our world filled with anger and hate?
The innocent brought down to death in the market place?
With some leaders blinded by power, costumed in scripted words of concern.
While wagging their tongues with pretty veiled lies,
that deceive and sway many of your people.
Unbeknownst to them playing upon their fears, ignorance and prejudices.
Please heal all your creation.
Help us turn away from such wickedness.
Open our hearts, minds and souls.
Save us, fill us with your grace, truth and love.
Make us your servant hands and feet in this world.
For you are a loving God.
Sending Christ into the world showing us the way.
Forgiving our sins, destroying death, giving life eternal.
That we may delight in your presence.
Know your blessings.
Serve you all our days.
O God of creation and song,
always am I praising you with my voice.
You hear the supplications of my heart.
Assurance, guidance, forgiveness, healing and truth are found with you.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Lament of the Frustrated – Rev. Sarah Ky Price
Why have the vipers entered into this pit with me again?
It seems so often that I pray to you, God.
I’m doing my best; I even try to pray for them.
I pray that their fangs do not penetrate beyond the superficial.
I pray that the blood they seek will not be mine.
And here they are again, piercing my skin I thought had thickened.
I bleed and I hurt and I shake my fist to you and say, “Why? Why?”
You answer me back in the quiet of my dreams
not so much with the answers I want to hear
but instead with reassurance in the passage of time.
I realize in my waking that the bites are not actually that deep.
I see that you’ve already bandaged my wounds with the kind words of others
whom you have blessed me with as companions on this journey.
And so, even here in the pit of my own frustration, I thank you.
And as I lick my wounds, I am learning.
I’m learning how to pray for the vipers, not just for myself.
I’m learning they are your creatures, too.
I’m learning how they feel threatened, hated, and hurt.
I’m learning when they lash out it isn’t about me.
Help me, God, to see them as you see them.
And give me kinder words next time
so that all of us may find our wounds being healed.
Gun Violence – A Lament
Dale Smith
Dear God who makes the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk—
Dear God who changes minds, turns tables, and raises the dead—
Guns are killing the United States.
Atlanta, Boulder, El Paso.
Parkland, Charleston, Sandy Hook.
Our own Virginia Beach, just last week,
And Virginia Tech too.
A flash on the news screen, then gone
Replaced by the latest lone gunman,
Whose family had no clue.
Our leaders claim at our funerals
That death is the cost of freedom.
Because you do not step in, they think that you agree with them!
Hear our groaning, O Lord, and remember
You who hardened the heart of Pharaoh
Can soften the hearts of legislators.
You who emboldened Moses
Can embolden your Church to stand up
To say, “The freedom not to die
At the grocery store
Or spa
Or church
Or school
Outweighs the freedom
To own a weapon of war!”
Selah.
We will praise you for such transformation.
We will praise you for lives not destroyed.
Grateful voices will sing and shout that
God did not look away
Did not agree that weapons are worth it
And lifted this country from its bloody pit:
Allowing the grandmother to go to church
The child to school
The worker to work.
Praise the Lord!
Psalm of Lament – Karen Franklin
Good God! What must I endure? I’m drowning in a heaviness worse than anything ever experienced before. Pain, disillusionment rain down like hot, sizzling raindrops. I call out to You my God, but I can’t see you through the haze of my fear that you have abandoned me.
Century old cries of my people have wafted up to your ears louder than thunder claps. There in their pain you met them. You were that strong tower that covered then in their distress.
I am my ancestors- I am their tears their pain. Therefore You my God will meet me in my suffering and sorrow.
I raise my eyes through the haze and am blinded by your love and hear your gentle call. You alone know me and I will walk beside you. My heart joins in your song- bowing down to your greatness and faithfulness toward your people.