PODCAST
Permission to Lament
July 11th, 2025
Lamentations 3:19-26.
One of the communities in which I pastored experienced multiple tragedies within a week that took the lives of four students and three teachers. I felt led to drop our plans for youth group that weekend and offer instead an intentional space for guided, lament-filled prayers. Students responded by putting their phones away and praying fervently.
To lament is to passionately express our grief, sorrow, confusion, and anger to God. The presence of lament throughout Scripture affirms that we serve a God who cares about our grief and holds space for us to express it, even and especially when it is directed toward God.
As we lament, we can still worship our God, who is good even when we are broken and hurting. The speaker who proclaims God’s goodness, faithfulness, and love in this chapter accuses that same God of mangling his body and using it as target practice (vv. 11-12). To intertwine raw lament and praise is messy and heavy and beautiful.
Our ever-present Comforter is with us in the midst of our darkest sorrows and will still be there in the light of the morning, eager to gift us with new and endless mercies.
Author: Miranda Musick
