Dear Incarnation,
One of my dearest friends, a fellow priest, moved to Ireland this week. I spent a few hours with her as she finished packing up the last of her things on Monday. After we said our goodbyes and I got into my car to pull away, she ran over to the driver's side window waving a few small sheets of paper that she'd meant to give me. It was a handwritten lament, composed as part of a retreat we'd led together many years ago in West Asia for Christian workers.
Most of these workers had labored faithfully for decades, learning another language and culture, becoming trusted friends and neighbors who listened well and cared for the most vulnerable in their communities. But they'd seen almost no fruit from their labors. The soil in that nation was very hard, they shared. And they saw their task as simply to help break it up so that someday, seeds of the gospel might be able to take root and grow.
These retreatants had experienced significant heartache — harassment, imprisonment, family division, financial loss, injustice, betrayal, unfulfilled dreams, loneliness, and long years of vocational futility. As part of our retreat, we'd invited them to write single words and phrases expressing their grief and anger, which we then composed into a collective lament.*
This was the lament my friend brought to my car window on Monday. Coincidentally, I'd already planned to write my letter this week on the practice of lament — and suddenly I had an example in my hands from a community well-acquainted with grief and loss. It was a gift to re-read their words, to remember their stories, and to be strengthened by their faithfulness.
Lament is a faithful response to loss, uncertainty, and pain. Many of our psalms are prayers of lament, anguished cries that accuse, mourn, complain, and interrogate God. Lament dares to turn toward God, rather than away from him, trusting that he is big enough to bear the full weight of our pain. In that way, lament helps keep us on the path of faithfulness. We continue to trust him with the moments of our days and the work of our hands, and he does the slow work of breaking up hard soil and growing new things in our midst.
If you are carrying heavy burdens — and so many of you are — I invite you to try writing a lament. You don't need to consider yourself a poet, a good writer, or even a particularly prayerful person; laments are rough. These are the instructions that I typically use:
"In a lament, people pour out their complaints to God in an effort to persuade him to act on their behalf, all the while stating their trust in him. Laments can have seven parts:
Address to God
Review of God's faithfulness in the past
The complaint
A confession of sin or claim of innocence
A request for help
God's response (often not stated)
A vow to praise, statement of trust in God
Not all parts are present in each lament, and they are not always in the same order. Laments allow a person to fully express their grief, and even accuse God, but this is quickly followed by a statement of trust in God. This combination makes for very powerful prayers." (From Healing the Wounds of Trauma: How the Church Can Help by Harriet Hill, Margaret Hill, Dick Baggé, and Pat Miersma. )
And below is the lament from that retreat in West Asia, all those years ago. I share it in hopes that our faithful brothers and sisters there might be an encouragement to us all, wherever the soil might feel very hard right now.
God, we are dry.
Our hands are brittle with work.
Our hearts are weary with prayer.
Have you forgotten us?
Will you always forget us?
We are here!
Where are you?
Should we stay?Are you here?
God, this place is dry.
We feel death in our bones.
Are you not the God who raises dry bones to praise your name?
There is anger down to our marrow.
Are you not the God who brings peace?
How long will this dryness last?
How logn will this difficulty endure?
Will the river bed be filled again?
Will its banks know again the water's flow?
The trees have been killed.
Only stumps are left.
All are dead.
There is no God here.
And yet, I remember your works.
I remember that you are the God who raises dry bones.
You are the God who brings peace.
You have revealed to your saints the mystery hidden from generations.
You are worthy of praise,
And our hearts will rejoice in you.
***
Next week, we will enter the season of Lent, a time in the church calendar in which we intentionally lament all that is wrong in the world, all the hard soil that has yet to bear fruit. I am grateful for this tithe of our year in which our worship gives voice to all our grief and frustration. I hope you'll join us for pancakes (one last sugary hurrah!) on Shrove Tuesday, and services on Ash Wednesday in VA and MD.
With love,
Amy
* Leigh McAfee was the person from our West Asia team who sifted all these words and wove them into a cohesive lament. This retreat was many years before Incarnation was a thought in anyone's mind, but I am so delighted that I still get to serve alongside Leigh, who serves on our outreach team and hosted Sunday's World Mission lunch!
p.s. We sang the song below at our Maryland service on World Mission Sunday and I wanted to share it with you all. I loved singing in so many languages across both services — huge thanks to our amazing music teams!
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