Common Lament
How do you need to express lament today?
Psalm 22:1
“My God, my God,
Why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far away,
so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?”
In this moment of our world’s history, I’m grateful for the examples of lament that we have access to in the Scriptures. I’m grateful to know that for all of human history people have been literally and metaphorically raising their fists to the heavens, questioning the distance that they feel from the Creator.
At the beginning of this particular Holy Week in the year of 2025, it’s also somehow a balm to my soul to know that these words connected Jesus to the common human experience of lamenting the conditions that he faced. These words from the Psalms were on his lips as he endured the weight of persecution from the Empire. In his co-mingled divinity and humanity, Jesus felt fully the pain and suffering of state oppression and he used these words of lament from the Psalms to help him express that pain.
What freedom and permission that gives us to fully express the pain of this moment of our collective history.
How do you need to express lament today? What pain needs to be spoken and shared in community?
—Candace Woods