A Lenten Lament

Written by: Sarah Schluep

Read Psalm 22.

While walking around the lake on a cold winter afternoon, I noticed a bird’s nest that had recently blown out of a tree. While some nests are reused by birds each year, others are discarded, rebuilt. There is a sense of mourning or loss that comes during the winter, as things that once held life are dormant or discarded. Shortly after graduating college, what should have felt like a new beginning felt more like an ending. During one of the most confusing, dark times of my life, I struggled to find a way to cling to my faith while navigating the pain I was experiencing. I don’t know that I had ever learned how to lament: sitting in sorrow, with God, vulnerable, and open. Since that time, I’ve learned that those who have gone before us, in Scripture as well as ancient church mothers and fathers, have left us with beautiful expressions of raw, honest conversation with God, holding the tension of both suffering and beauty. In a world marked with pain, hardship, and conflict, the Psalms help us find a way to learn the practice of lament, to sit with heaviness and guide our broken hearts towards Jesus, the Suffering Servant.  

The Psalms were Jesus’s prayer book, likely known intimately. During his suffering and crucifixion, Jesus reached for the words of Psalm 22, written by David hundreds of years before. 

 “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” echoes the cry of David, of Jesus, of the saints, as we, beloved by God, struggle to make sense of the cruelty and pain of this broken world. Jesus’s prayer reminds us that we are not alone. He came to suffer both with us and for us, enduring the hardships of having a human body, living in human systems, and experiencing human hurt. In a wonderous moment of God’s kingdom present on earth, the God of whom David says, “Our ancestors trusted in you, and you rescued them. They cried out to you and were saved. They trusted in you and were never disgraced,” allowed himself to be disgraced on the cross (Psalm 22:4-5). He was mocked, beaten, and crucified, so that we could experience the fullness of God’s kingdom on earth.  

Read Psalm 22 again. Where do you see foreshadowing, or prophecy, of Jesus’s crucifixion?  

Allow yourself to sit with any heaviness or pain you’ve been feeling. Like Jesus, where do you find comfort in the Psalmist’s words? 

Close in prayer:

“But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
    You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
Deliver me from the sword,
    my precious life from the power of the dogs.

I will declare your name to my people;
    in the assembly I will praise you…
For he has not despised or scorned
    the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
    but has listened to his cry for help.
The poor will eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek the Lord will praise him—
    may your hearts live forever!

Psalm 22:19-20, 22, 24, 26

*All Scripture taken from the New International Version..