Gib spoke this past week on the idea of lament and as a community, we were led through a profound reading of lament over the circumstances in our lives, our city, and our world.  I (JR) have continued to ponder the place of lament in the life of Christian community for the last few days.  Many of you will have already discussed this in your small groups, but as mine meets tonight, I am still looking forward to the discussion.

To be transparent, I must admit that I am scared to lament.  It makes me vulnerable and threatens the pride I take in situations being within my control.  These desires I have however, for invulnerability on the one hand and pride in my own ability to control situations on the other, are nothing shy of idolatry.  To lament then, is to blaspheme the idols in my life in the hope that God will fill the void.  The way God fills this void however, comes not by an immediate change of the situations which I lament, but by the constitution and life of a community which laments together - in hope.

I take great solace in the biblical notion that while lamenting may threaten that which I (wrongly) hold most dear, it simultaneously grants me the opportunity to realign my vision of reality with God’s by drawing me into a community seeking to live out the reality of God’s Kingdom in the world.

This is not a foreign concept to us; misery, as they say, loves company.  But this is where the world and the people of God part ways.  We seek solace in the arms of others not because they merely empathize with us and our grief (this is yet another form of idolatry), but because the very Spirit of God dwells in the midst of the body of Christ, strengthening us, sustaining us, and filling us with an overflowing measure of faith, hope, and love.  I would go so far as to say that lament – a God-centered cry for justice and mercy – is a divine opportunity for us to live out what it means to be the people of God – a people united not in their complaints, but in their Spirit-infused hope for the Kingdom of God to come “on earth as it is in heaven.”