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– by Kristen Curtis
September is Disaster Preparedness Month. As someone who engages in Disaster and Hospital chaplaincy, I am perhaps more aware than most of how often we face disasters of many kinds — big events that affect whole communities and personally devastating disasters like illness, the painful end of a relationship, or the loss of a job. The possibilities for facing disaster in this fallen world are many.
And if I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a hundred times: “I know we aren’t supposed to question God, but. . ..” I used to respond with something like, “God is big enough to handle your questions and he loves you unconditionally. You can ask him anything.” That is absolutely true, but Mark Vroegop’s Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament has broadened my thinking about inviting God into our suffering. In the book, he points to a pattern we find in Lamentations and many of the Psalms — a pattern that has changed the way I think about processing and praying about hard things. So, in an effort to help us be spiritually prepared for disaster, I offer this template for lament using Psalm 22 as a case study.
David starts this Psalm not with an idle “woe is me,” but by inviting God into his emotionally dark place: “God, God . . . my God!” The first step in lament is to take your pain and complaint to the one person who can actually do something about it — God.
Then David moves into the part of lament many of us are really good at: complaint. I rather like The Message translation here: “God, God. . . my God! Why did you dump me miles from nowhere? Doubled up with pain, I call to God all the day long. No answer. Nothing.” David is not praying the kind of sanitized prayer we often share in public. He is giving God his raw, unfiltered pain, abandonment, and sense of injustice. And this is the very passage Jesus chose to cry out from the cross — a ringing endorsement, if ever there was one, for “getting real” with God in our broken-heartedness.
David pours out his complaint, and no lightning bolts strike him. But here is the hard part: God remains silent. God does not always remove us from disaster or difficult circumstances. David sits with the question, “If God is good and God loves me, how can he leave me here hurting and feeling so alone?” We do not always get an answer to that question. And that is a hard thing to sit with.
Beginning in verse 19, David moves from complaint to request. He does not stay “stuck” in complaint mode (which, if I’m honest, is where I like to wallow when life feels upside down). He tells God clearly what he wants: “You, God — don’t put off my rescue! Hurry and help me!” In doing so, David remembers that God is powerful enough to act, and he reminds himself who God is, even when his emotions are telling him something different.
Then David looks beyond the current disaster and imagines the future where he will praise God for what comes next. “Here’s the story I’ll tell my friends when they come to worship. . . He has never let you down, never looked the other way when you were being kicked around.” He envisions a future where people are running back to God, where God has the last word, and where even future generations will hear the good news that God does what he says.
Reading this Psalm on this side of the cross shows how true David’s holy imagining would be. We, generations long after David, have heard the good news. We can gain hope from David’s story — this imperfect man who shared his raw hurt with God, sinned and received forgiveness, and danced undignified before the Lord. And we can gain even greater hope from David’s descendant, the Messiah, whose own worst day would drive Him to this same song of lament and open the doors to hope and salvation.
You’ll see this pattern in other passages of lament in scripture, and I have found it incredibly helpful in processing and praying through my own pain and grief:
- Invite God into the hard place.
- Complain — be raw and real with God.
- Ask him for what you want, remembering who he is even when you do not yet feel what you know to be true.
- Look beyond today and praise God in faith for who he is and what he will do.
This process, at least for me, helps me deal directly with what hurts — not ignore it or rush past it in an inauthentic way — but also not get stuck there. Remembering who God is and how much he loves me, even when he does not act in the way or on the timeline I want him to, carries my heart beyond this single dark moment. It reminds me that nothing on this earth lasts forever, that God is the great rescuer who keeps all of his promises, and that I can trust him.
This month, as we prepare our homes, churches, and communities for disaster, may we also prepare our hearts by practicing honest prayer, faithful lament, and renewed trust in the God who keeps his promises.