Lamentations at Thanksgiving

 We as Christians have done a poor job at describing the whole of Scripture.  In fact, we have tried to make our theology a McDonalds menu of choices where we have the ability to present the love of God without His holiness, the goodness of God without His wrath.  Give me an order of the peace of God, but not the patience.  I will take an order of joy, but hold the trials.  In doing this, our theology has very little place for pain and suffering, for hardship and turmoil.  This is evident in the hymnody of our day and the seeming total absence of suffering in many of our worship songs.  Sure it might mention it in passing, but then it quickly gets to the good stuff.  Our Bible study does the same - talk about Christ who gives me strength and less about the danger and nakedness and peril we will face that cannot separate us from the love of God.  

And so we come to a holiday like Thanksgiving.  And we often do not have much we feel like being thankful for, and so we have tension in us.  

Enter the biblical place of lament - crying out to God because things are not what they ought to be.  

God has made promises to us that we are waiting for Him to fulfill.  Promises like no more crying and no more pain.  And here we are crying and in pain - we can tell Him that we are hurting and it does not make us less faithful.  We can acknowledge our cares while we cast them on Him.  We can give thanks in all circumstances while acknowledging we might want those things to go away.  Jesus did it in Gethsemane.  Paul did it with his thorn.  And we have examples of it in the Psalms and the Prophets.  So let us make use of this category of worship - Lament.  Here are a few tips:

1. Be honest.

2. Be reverent

3. Allow God to be God and acknowledge His character even when you cant see what He is doing!

And while doing those three things - tell God how much pain you are in.  He hears, cares, listens, and already knows.  We do not have to pretend to have it all together and a freedom from suffering is not the mark of spiritual maturity.  In fact, it seems that often spiritual maturity comes as a result of the suffering that we are promised!