When we cry out to God in community, we will become more united, we will become more attuned to God’s will over our own wills, we will be more apt to discern God’s solutions and ways out, and we will find ourselves in the company of others when we most need it. So, my friends, let’s cry out to God as a community, and let’s trust in God to guide us forward into our best possible future.
My friends, God offers us through the biblical laments an opportunity to live past the crises of the day, even while we are the midst of them.
So I encourage you to do what the biblical lamenters did – recall God’s mighty deeds of the past (both distant past and recent past) – that you might find within your remembrance of those deeds the strength you need to proceed without fear or worry!
Because, y’all, that’s what this part of lamenting is about. It’s about US – not God – remembering WHO God is and WHAT God does and HOW MUCH God loves us and desires good things for us. So please, PLEASE, in your pain and despair, name every…single…awful detail of your complaint to God, and then prayerfully consider…is this really what God wants?
And it’s important to remember what our ancestors in the faith learned and revealed to us, it’s important to remember what God made sure to record in the scriptures so it could be transmitted to us after thousands of years – the single most important thing we can do in the midst of difficult times, especially in the midst of generationally difficult times, in the midst of COVID, is to take our real feelings to God FIRST, to keep the relationship with God going as our NUMBER ONE PRIORITY. It will make all the difference.