TRAUMA & RESILIENCE - A Handbook
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Content
  • Authors
  • Purchase
  • Contact
  • Training Materials
  • Blog
  • Pandemic Resilience Resources
  • Chapters from Trauma & Resilience Handbook for FREE distribution

Laments, Psalms, and Contemplations
for Global Healthcare Workers

There are times when the intensity of human suffering we attend to is heart numbing. There are moments when we understandably fear but need to buckle up and manage a crisis. And, there are soul wrenching decisions we abhor to make. In all of this we wonder...where is God? What on earth is he doing? How do we reach out when what we have to offer is not necessarily "nice." This blog is trying to find a voice, steeped in the tradition of biblical faith.

Send Your Blog Contribution to Editor

Lamenting as Wrestling or War - Dan Allender's gutsy words

4/6/2020

0 Comments

 
Dan Allender's words on Lament are as refreshing as they are provocative. His words encourage us to dare to wrestle with God, like Jacob at the Jabok. The Latin verb aggredere means "to move close" as well as "to confront." Confronting God? Daring aggression towards God sounds sacrilegious in a way. However, God invites us to come close and reveal what is really in our hearts. Being "nice" is not required. Truthfulness and openness are based in more trust and "moving close" than niceness! We are perfectly okay when we join with the people of faith in the psalms in  voicing disappointment, frustration, and anger about a situation to God, and even towards Him.  As we dare closeness and bare our raw souls, God looks upon us with compassion and sees our hearts more than our words. Healing comes through our willingness to  encounter God in a new way, for him to affect us, and our surrender to him. In  Jacob's case, coming close to wrestle with God resulted in a dislocated hip. Whatever dis-location of our hearts and minds we may experience in our own wrestling with God, it will put us in the most fruitful place moving forward. 

Let's listen to Dan Allender (Mars Hill Review, 1994):
​“To lament—that is to cry out to God with our doubts, our incriminations of him and others, to bring a complaint against him—is the context for surrender. Surrender—the turning of our heart over to him, asking for mercy, and receiving his terms for restoration— is impossible without battle. To put it simply, it is inconceivable to surrender to God unless there is a prior, declared war against him. 
 
Christians often assume our conflict with God was finished when we converted. At that point, we were enemies of God—indeed, we were and it was a great battle. But the battle is not over with conversion. Though it is the decisive victory that assures the outcome of the war, it is hardly the last and final fight.  
 
Sanctification is a lifetime process of surrendering as more and more intense conflicts with God and others expose and dissolve our urgent preoccupation with the self. A lament is the battle cry against God that paradoxically voices a heart of desire and ironic faith in his goodness.”  Dan Allender, Mars Hill Review, 1994 
0 Comments

Psalms of Lament in the Bible

4/3/2020

0 Comments

 
Individual Lament
□  Psalm 3, 5, 6, 7, 13, 17, 22, 25, 26, 28, 31, 35, 38, 39, 42, 43, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61,
                 63, 64, 69, 71, 73, 77, 86, 88, 102, 109, 130, 142, 143
Communal Lament
□ Psalm 44, 60, 74, 79, 80, 83

(T&RH)
0 Comments

Praying or Writing Your Lament

4/3/2020

0 Comments

 
 
A SIMPLE STRUCTURE OF LAMENT
 
 □ Addressing God
□  Presenting the situation, including feelings, and complaints
□  Affirming trust based on past experience with God
□  Presenting petitions, desires, or needs
□  Presenting enemies and the need for justice
□  Expressing expectation that God will hear and act according to his faithfulness and promises
□   Praising God


Laments do not always have all of these elements, e.g. the last three. This simple structure is intended to help you get going, and to hold you as you walk through exploring laments, not to stifle your personal time with God. 

The above structure can be found in T&R Handbook. 

0 Comments

Lament

4/3/2020

0 Comments

 
In times of great pain, grief, and sorrow we are tempted to just shut down and withdraw from people as well as God. Though it feels better in the moment, it unfortunately can gradually disconnect us from an important source of our resilience: Our relationships with our community and God.  In lament, we are willing to let pain, grief, and other strong feelings enter our hearts with the intent to bring them before God in whatever way we can bring them to him. This can include using words, gestures, groans, tears, outcries, or symbolic acts. We can do this privately or in community.  God gladly receives our laments, knowing they are a sign of our trust and willingness to be truly ourselves with Him. He already knows what we feel and what is on our hearts, and He understands it. And, our lament will affect him. He takes it in and responds to us out of his compassion and love. 

Our lament may be something like: "Lord, five people died today. We fought so hard, unsuccessfully! Lord, have mercy! My heart aches for them and for their families. Lord, when will this end! I commit them to you and your care. I need your comfort and presence right now. They are my rod and staff in the valley of shadows."


"In lament we acknowledge distress over a painful occurrence and present it to God and the community; both are expected to pay attention, hear, and resonate. As God receives human pain into his heart and processes it in divine ways, he is expected to act according to who he is and to fulfill his promises now and at the end of time." (From T&R Handbook)
0 Comments

    Editor and Author
    Frauke Schaefer, MD - family physician, who served in Nepal, then turned psychiatrist and counselor to support those in high stress environments.
    This blog seeks to capture various voices from global settings. 

    ​

    Archives

    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020

    Categories

    All
    Bible
    Contemplations
    Laments
    Prayer
    Psalms

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly