Lamentations

Today is a fitting day for me to post about Lamentations, because I've sure spent the morning lamenting. The kids won't listen, my old legs hurt, my organization's policies make my life difficult, it's hot here, etc, etc...

Want some cheese with your whine?!? Some impressions about Lamentations:

1. Evidently, complaining has its place. I asked this question with Job, saw a partial answer in the Psalms, and now here we are in Lamentations. A whole book of complaints! Dictionary.com defines a lamentation as "an expression or sorrow, wailing or mourning." It's like a dirge or an elegy. Nice. So, surely, it's legit to sound off about your angst. Let it rip! Something tells me, however, that a true, Biblical lament needs to be about something more than the weather here in Fresno...

2. This is one honest text. I appreciated the realness, the authenticity of the laments. I suppose if you are lamenting, then you are in touch with what is really going on within you and at a point where you don't feel shame in expressing it. But in the context of reading Isaiah and Jeremiah right before, where you get nothing but the evil perpetrated by the nation, it was refreshing to have some straight up confession. Looking for models of honest confession for your next quiet time? See 1:20 and 5:16 for two examples.

3. There's a public nature to the punishment being lamented. I'd say it's fitting that Lamentations made the Canon, given that the sacking of the nation was a public spectacle to the nations. 2:16 says: "All your enemies open their mouths wide against you; they scoff and gnash their teeth and say, 'We have swallowed her up. This is the day we have waited for; we have lived to see it.'" Yikes.

4. Big "yets" are few and far between in Lamentations. Not a lot of "woe, woe, woe...but YETs" in Lamentations. YET there is a particularly nice one in 3:21 and it flows into perhaps the most famous verses in Lamentations. You know, the ones from 3:22-24 that you are likely to find on a wall-hanging in your local Christian bookstore next to a nice picture of the sunrise.

5. Come to think of it, perhaps it IS OK to lament the weather... On my post-it, I simply wrote "Fresno" and "5:10." Sure enough, there it is...