Lamentations

I bet you can't guess which book of the Bible is my favorite!  It's not one people will often list as one of their favorites.  Actually, if you read the title of this post, you may have guessed it by now.  Yep.  My favorite book of the Bible is Lamentations.  There's just something about it that I'm drawn to.  In Jeremiah's mourning over the way that sin has devastated the once glorious Israel I see glimpses of what Christ must have felt as our sin devastated His body.  As He's watched the effects of sin on His people since the fall of man.  It's not uncommon to hear sin brushed off as not a big deal in our culture.  Lamentations is a brutal reminder that sin is devastating and that the effects truly are something to mourn over.


I was pleased to see this article on Relevant Magazine's Facebook feed today: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/practical-faith/are-we-missing-something-important-about-prayer.  It is about lamenting in our prayers and how lamenting is something that is too often left out.  I think the way we view lamenting can deeply affect our theology.


In John 10:10, Jesus says, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."  We have an enemy that uses sin for no other purpose than to steal, kill, and destroy.  Sin is supposed to hurt us, as are the other aspects of a living in a world broken by sin such as disease, natural, disaster, etc.  Things are not as they were meant to be.  They are broken.  And the enemy is cruel.  In 1 Peter 5:8, Peter tells us, "Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."


I think that failing to acknowledge this fact may cause us to miss out on a few things.  The first is the importance of repentance.  God calls us to repent because sin is a big deal.  Such a big deal, in fact, that He sent His one and only Son to die on a cross to free us from it.  Mourning over our sins leads us to repentance.  But first we have to realize that they are a big enough deal to mourn over.


Second, I think it forces us to be dishonest with ourselves, others, and God.  No one is happy all the time.  Life can be incredibly painful.  God never promises that it won't be; only that He will be with us and that someday He will make all things new.  In the meantime, we are guaranteed to have a spiritual enemy that will come after us.  He can't snatch us away from God, but He can wreak a lot of havoc in our lives.  Pain and suffering are realities.  And it can be beneficial to acknowledge the difficulties we face rather than pretending they don't exist or that we're fine.  Acknowledging them to ourselves allows us to work through them.  Acknowledging them to other people that we trust allows others to stand by us and support us.  Acknowledging them to God can bring us into a more intimate relationship with Him.  He already knows what's going on in our hearts, so why not be honest with Him?  He cares and wants us to come to Him with our hurts and struggles.  The Bible is full of people crying out to God in pain and anger.  Job even got a reply.


Last and I think most important, it causes us to miss an important aspect of God's character and what Christ came to accomplish.  God mourns over the devastation that sin causes.  He mourns for us when tragedy strikes.  He mourns for us in the smaller stuff, too.  John 11:35 is the shortest verse in the Bible.  "Jesus wept."  Jesus wept over a dead man whom He was about to raise back to life.  He knew that everything would work out, but that didn't keep Him from mourning.  The promise that God will work all things together for the good of those who love Him doesn't mean that we don't get to mourn and that there isn't a place for it.  I believe that Jesus still weeps.  The cross was part of the process of removing the sin that gives us reason to mourn.  If Jesus mourns over brokeness of this world, then part of being like Jesus is mourning over the brokeness of this world.