WHY PERSONAL LAMENT IS IMPORTANT IN KNOWING GOD
Psalm 13
What Lament Is
Quick—think of a Christian praise song.
Piece of cake. Praise songs cover the Christian landscape like leaves on the forest floor. If we were to ask for a lament song, however, we would get mostly blank stares.
Contemporary Christian culture lives by an unstated rule. Happy is good. Sad is bad. After all, the Apostle Paul tells us, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). Therefore, praise is the special of the day, every day.
Do not get me wrong. Praise is fitting because we worship a praiseworthy God. But we also live in a world full of grief.
So, insofar as we understand the command in Philippians to mean that we recognize the Lord as the unique source of all things joyful, we get it right. When we use it to disallow outspoken grief, we enter dangerous spiritual territory.
The Importance of Lament
Believers need lament. It is the act of taking our grief to God. It is a complaint that says, “Here is what is wrong, Lord. I need you to do something about it.”
Lament allows us to acknowledge that we need help. The act allows us to look at reality truthfully. It acknowledges that God knows about our situation and wants to do something about it.
Lament is also worship. When we direct our prayers to God as laments, we acknowledge his care for our lives. We let him know that we trust him to deliver us. The book of Psalms contains more personal laments than praises. Laments give us a voice to speak to God when we lack the capacity to praise.
Finally, lament allows us to ask the difficult questions. A young man who encountered multiple life-shattering tragedies observed, “When good things happen, we praise God. But when bad things happen, why are we not allowed to blame God?”
He is right. What kind of God runs away when we ask questions?
The Bigger God of the Psalms
This is the reason why I love the balance of praise and lament in the Psalms. The book shows that God is not only big enough to receive our praise, but he is also big enough to handle our complaints.
Psalm 13 is a lament of David stripped to its barest essentials. In a mere six verses, we watch David journey from terror to resolution. The psalm falls into three parts of two verses each.
Part 1: David’s Address and Lament, (Verses 1-2)
In the first stanza, David presents his case.
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
--Psalm 13:1-2
David uses his voice freely. His repeated cries of “How long” show that his side of his relationship with God matters. He shows no embarrassment over his predicament.
Notice the fourth line. An enemy threatens to destroy him. Almost all the personal laments mention an enemy who threatens to undermine the writer’s relationship with his God. The psalmists never believed in a me-and-God-outside-the-world relationship. Their God led them through the real world, with all its hostilities. One Bible commentator writes,
One of the acts of the enemy is what they say.... The enemy mocks the lamenter, rejoices at his stumbling and falling, revels in his or her misfortune....Almost all these statements are characterized by two interrelated concerns: (1) The speech of the enemy seeks the destruction of the lamenter. (2) The enemy’s actual intention is hidden behind lies and false accusations.”
(Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1965), 189, 190.)
Part 2: David’s Petition to God, (verses 3-4)
The second stanza contains David’s prayer to God, with a comment on the consequences if God fails to answer. The prayer takes place in the first two lines: “Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; / light up my eyes...” (Ps. 13:3). The metaphor’s meaning spans centuries. The picture that David has in mind is, “Restore my vitality.”
If God does not fulfill David’s request, the consequences will be dire:
...lest I sleep the sleep of death.
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
--Psalm 13:3-4
Notice that in the lament, if the petitioner fails, then the enemy wins. And if the enemy wins, his victory will be over God himself.
Part 3: David’s Confession of Trust and Vow of Praise, (verses 5-6)
The last stanza depicts an abrupt and absolute change of mood. After his petition against his enemy, David bursts into a song of praise.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.”
--Psalm 13:5
This change of mood is neither an emotional sleight of hand, nor the song of a super-spiritual Christian who has developed the ability to compartmentalize his problems and then ignore them. David’s words reveal a genuine realization that God has his back.
This kind of reversal does not occur in every lament, but it appears often enough to tell us that it is real.
One of my friends in a church men’s study told me once about an identical experience that he had had. He described the same change in attitude that David experienced. He was deep in prayer about a personal matter when he felt a very sudden realization that God had his back. He had experienced the work of the Spirit, just as David has.
Having received divine confirmation that God will work on his behalf, David concludes the psalm with a triumphal note:
I will sing to the LORD,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
--Psalm 13:6
This section marks the vow of praise, a promise to perform a public retelling of what God has done. Biblical praise understands that God works in real situations. It is genuine, active, and concrete. It reflects on the situation that was and lauds the Lord for his deliverance.
Conclusion
Laments are critical for us to maintain a meaningful relationship with God because they allow for meaningful praise. When we can voice our complaint, our later praise will carry much more weight.
More importantly, laments protect our framework of faith. Both the issue and the answer matter to God. When we are disallowed to take our complaints to God, soon they begin to morph into complaints about God. Too often, these complaints become an outright denial of God’s existence.
Doug Knox