A Confluence of Lament

Recently, I’ve been reflecting on pastors in persecuted contexts and have been thinking about the concept of lament. As He often does, God has been weaving together a convergence of experiences, conversations, and insights into His word, leaving me with a tangle of emotions and thoughts.

Encountering Psalm 88: A Lament Without Resolution

Not long ago, I heard Dr. Kit Barker speak on the Psalms of Lament at a church retreat—particularly Psalm 88, a psalm that does not end in hope or resolution but plunges deep into despair. Kit invited us to encounter this lament viscerally, and he made that possible through his tears.

As if that was not enough, as he spoke, a memory surfaced in my mind.

I was in primary school in Malaysia, living with a family other than my own. One day, I was swimming in the brown waters of the Lawas River. I dove down and reached for the bottom, but became trapped when I tried to come back up. A pontoon made of logs lashed together blocked my way up. Out of breath, I reached around to search for an opening, but there was none. I had run out of air. (Thankfully, I eventually found a small crack between the logs, put my lips up, and gulped some air. Having been reoriented, I emerged from under the logs. No one else knew.)

Reflecting on both that moment and these explorations into lament, I recognized something. In that river, I felt forsaken—no way out, no parents, no air, no hope. Lament is just like this. It expresses the experience of feeling abandoned, unheard, and lost in the depths. But lament is also the reaching—the desperate searching for a gap, an opening, a possibility of breath.

Lament as Protest and Refusal

While I do not endorse American scholar Walter Brueggemann’s theology as a whole, allow me to respond to his ideas on lament with a reflection of my own. Brueggemann describes lament as a “complaint which makes the shrill insistence:

Things are not right in the present arrangement.
They need not stay this way but can be changed.
The speaker will not accept them this way, for it is intolerable.
It is God’s obligation to change things.”¹

As we examined Psalm 88, we saw that lament is not passive suffering. It is an act of protest—an unwillingness to accept the world as it is. It refuses to let injustice, oppression, and despair have the final word. Yet, as Brueggemann notes, lament is dangerous because it calls God Himself to account. He suggests that Psalm 88 is one of the boldest examples of this—a cry against human injustice and God’s apparent silence. In his words, it is “a very dangerous act to keep petitioning the court of Yahweh against its own (perceived) injustice.”

As I read this, I hear Jesus cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Those words are unbearable. When placed alongside Psalm 88, they confront us again with unrelenting darkness, the protest of injustice, and a deafening silence. Yet, in these very words, we also see a deeper meaning: on the cross, Jesus was truly abandoned so that we might never be. He descended into the deepest darkness—not merely to stand with us in our suffering, but to take its full weight upon Himself—so that when we cry out, we are never alone and may be rescued from ultimate abandonment. His forsakenness became our redemption, His cry our assurance that God will never turn away from us.

Learning to Lament: A Communal Practice

Persecuted leaders experience personal suffering, real opposition, injustice, and isolation. They can live in the depths of Psalm 88, where no escape is visible, the logs above them seem unmovable, and even God appears silent. Their prayers are not neat petitions wrapped in polite theology; they are raw cries—refusals to accept the present arrangement, insistences that things must change.

But how do we who do not face such persecution encounter the gift of lament? While our circumstances may be different, our lives will have seasons—sometimes long seasons—where lament is the only response.

Lament, however, is not just personal—it is deeply communal. The psalms of lament were never meant to be said in isolation; they were written to be sung together. As God’s people cry out with one voice, lament is intended to be shared—a collective cry of pain and protest before God. Yet, too often we treat lament as a private struggle, something to be worked through alone.

The New Testament church continues this Old Testament practice. Paul exhorts believers to “sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16), and with nearly a third of the psalms expressing lament, it is clear that lament remained essential to the worship and spiritual life of the early church.

But there are other reasons why communal lament is to be embraced. Persecuted leaders are not meant to endure their trials in solitude. The whole body of Christ is to carry their grief. Our prayers and their burdens lifted in our songs should echo their cries. The church is called to weep with those who weep, to mourn with those who mourn, and to ensure that suffering does not go unseen or unheard. Yet, we seem to have lost this practice of lament.

Further, sung laments are not just an expression of sorrow—they are preparations. They shape our hearts, train us to endure, and give voice to grief when trials inevitably come. Psalm 88 does not resolve. It doesn’t offer an easy escape. There was no light in the moment of abandonment and silence. And yet, lament also does something vital: it keeps speaking when everything else is silent. It cries out when the heavens seem closed. It walks beside those for whom lament is the only resource.

Perhaps that is the first act of hope: to cry out into the silence, refusing to let death have the last word. To lament with those who suffer, refusing to let their cries go unanswered. To keep searching for breath, trusting that God is not absent even in silence or waiting. And to believe that because Jesus endured the ultimate silence, the silence will one day break.

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Revelation 21:4

Author’s Note: At the retreat, we were invited to write a personal lament. I've included my own on the original version of this article, which uses the imagery of being trapped under a pontoon.

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NOTES

I differ from Brueggemann in several areas, but his insights on Lament and the Psalms are helpful, particularly in this article from which the quotes are taken: The Costly Loss of Lament. Walter Brueggemann, JfSOT 36 (1986) 57-71