Introduction: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

 "Truly, Truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world  will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy." John 16:20 NAS

                                Introduction

The season of Lent, we now complete this week, has often been seen as a spiritual preparation for Christians to prepare our hearts for Jesus' sacrificial gift of grace.

The forty days are often considered a time of sorrow and grief that remembers His crucifixion to give us God's gift of grace. Through our loss we too can begin to recognize the shadows and barriers we have set around God's promises and reopen His call to pursue life under His influence.

Lament goes beyond our very heartsick trials to consider even our deepest sorrows, including those we may have hidden from ourselves. A lament is considered a passionate expression of grief that we often instinctively neutralize because the pain is too hard to bear.

The "Book of Lamentations" expresses one of Israel's worst seasons of history where death, decay, disease, and disillusion completely separated them from God's presence individually and as a chosen nation. It is a brutal  and unrelenting scripture.

Yet before healing could be accepted the darkness needed to be brought into God's piercing light. Like a surgeon's skillful knife removing an unseen cancer before the spreading poison completely corrupts.

As we pause we are invited to connect our spiritual hunger with the loving call from God. We can recalibrate and embrace a new beginning, even in the midst of extreme brokenness that our world is facing.

In the next forty weeks may the following passages, poems, and writing prompts refresh and restore our hearts in the Lord's everlasting grace. And form a foundation of hope for present or future sorrow knowing that His love is eternal.

Weeping: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

Reading: Lamentations 1:1-2, "How lonely sits the city....All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; They have become her enemies."

Weeping 

How true this grief feels throughout every community as the pandemic has brought so much loss and suffering. But it also goes deeper into each persons loss and tears in isolation. Even with some things that had no real value.

When we are emptied for any reason, we see what "dissolves" and what truly matters. especially when separated from loved ones.

And yet within the desolation and destruction we can search for the Lord as we remember He is present. And He has not turned away from us even when we have drifted from Him.

Show us, we pray, how to walk with You again, Lord, every moment in simple obedience to Your will. To be able to let go of anything that is false or not on Your path. To bring our brokenness into Your light. To live in Your resurrection power step by step.

Your thoughts,