I was first introduced to the concept of lament in the course of learning about racial justice and reconciliation over the last few years. I was reading Daniel Hill’s White Awake (which I highly recommend to white people). In one chapter, Hill writes about how lament is one of the necessary and appropriate responses to injustice and suffering. We, as white Americans, tend to want to focus on celebration and victory, or we want to jump immediately into fix-it mode when faced with suffering. We are not generally comfortable sitting with lament. It feels countercultural to us.

“The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” Ecclesiastes 7:4

Over the last few years, God has been deepening my understanding of the theology of suffering and lament in Scripture. This has given me a really practical way to navigate some of the suffering I have experienced since then.

Note: I know it may feel strange to call what we experience “suffering.” As my pastor often points out, there’s always someone experiencing something worse, so we might feel a little dramatic calling our own experiences suffering. But if we shy away from naming our suffering and calling out to God, we keep him at arm’s length instead of letting Him enter in.

And now here we are in April 2020 trying to wrap our minds around the massive collective grief and suffering we are experiencing as a human race with the COVID-19 pandemic. What do we even do with ourselves?

Lament. Hope. Repeat.

If I think about it too much, I can’t bear the weight of suffering around me. And that suffering is varied. For some it’s loneliness. For others loss and mourning. For some the loss of personal space. For some depression and crippling anxiety. For some loss of safety and security as they battle the virus up close. For others the loss of financial peace and a suddenly unknown future. And so many more.

It’s all suffering and it’s all hard.

And right in the middle of this is where our God enters in, not with a lecture, not with a harsh word of condemnation, not with a list of the thousands reasons his hand has allowed this, maybe not even with immediate relief . . . but with HIMSELF.

N.T. Wright wrote an excellent article in Time this week. I hope you get a chance to read it. He writes:

“Rationalists (including Christian rationalists) want explanations; Romantics (including Christian romantics) want to be given a sigh of relief. But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament. Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world.”

Wright reintroduces us to the Biblical concept of lament that’s woven throughout Scripture, saturates the Psalms, and was surely on the lips of our Savior:

“The point of lament, woven thus into the fabric of the biblical tradition, is not just that it’s an outlet for our frustration, sorrow, loneliness and sheer inability to understand what is happening or why. The mystery of the biblical story is that God also laments. Some Christians like to think of God as above all that, knowing everything, in charge of everything, calm and unaffected by the troubles in his world. That’s not the picture we get in the Bible.”

How do you imagine God in your lament? Do you imagine him cool and standoffish? Do you imagine him despising your weakness?

Or do you imagine God at the right hand of the need one (Psalm 109:31), empathizing with your weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15), calling you to lay down your burdens and learn from His gentle and humble heart (Matthew 11:28-30)?

The practice of lament has given me a path to endure suffering. It hasn’t taken my suffering away, but it has allowed me to endure it with my hope intact.

“Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” John 6:68

To help our church family lament, my pastor put together a list of lament Psalms. I made the list into this printable page you can use to find the lament Psalms in your Bible. You can download it HERE or by clicking on the image below.

I also made screensavers in English or Spanish you can download by clicking on the image below.

If you want more printables for lament, check out the printable “prayers and promises for lament” I created HERE.

USAGE NOTES: All artwork and photos are copyright Marydean Draws. These printables are free for your personal, school, ministry, or church use. If you share this, please link back to this post and not the PDF file. Please do not repost on another website. For other uses, please contact me.

hope lament printable screensaver suffering