Lament

Northern Ireland…amy

Lament seems counterintuitive when I’m reaching for hope. Yet the tears of lament water the soil from which hope grows. Lord in your mercy, hear my prayer…

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?*
Nothing is as it should be. Stores are empty while hospital beds become the primary consumers. Streets are silent, save the echoes of grief. Unemployment rises while care providers are over-worked. Playgrounds are secured with yellow caution tape forbidding play. Forbidding.
To be forbidden is a weight upon my chest. Freedom of movement. Forbidden. Freedom to hug. Forbidden. Freedom to join the throngs in celebration at worship, or the theater, or concerts. Forbidden.
As I feel these restraints deep within, I recognize myself within those I cannot see and do not know. Those suffering lack of freedom long before these burdensome weeks. Confined by poverty, fear, violence, depression…behind bars. My heart grieves.

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Nothing is as it should be. Has it ever been?
The weight of our human limitation has been ever present…through war, disease, oppression, abused power. Even in our own wandering for fulfillment that only leads to the unsatisfied desire for more. 

 And yet. In these valleys of despair, chased by our own demons, there persists within everyone the spark of hope, the will for life, the desire for peace. Even if we have never experienced it save for brief glimpses of time. Is this spark itself not the very light of God within us all? The Hope beyond hope. The Longing of our want The Belonging we desperately seek.

When my tears have been my food day and night. When words of hope feel empty against my lament. While people say continually, “Where is your God?
I will remember our Creator, whose DNA resides in all. I will remember God’s compassion expressed through hands and feet of faithful servants – living Hope beyond hope. I will remember God’s faithfulness that saves and sustains us against all our foolishness and desperation. I will remember God who exceeds all I can hope or imagine. I will remember the promise of life sung by each bud on the barren branches of spring. 

Why are you cast down O my soul, 
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise [my deliverer],
my help and my God. 
*verses from Psalm 42

Be at peace. 
In this together…