Learning to Lament: A 5-Day DevotionalSample

Learning to Lament: Choose to Trust

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that trust is something you decide once and for all as you are walking through pain. It’s not as if you pray one lament prayer, and you never need to lament again. Life isn’t that simple. Grief is not that tame. Instead, we must enter into lament over and over so that it can keep leading us to trust. 

In this respect, lament allows us to embrace an endurance that is not passive. Lament helps us to practice active patience.* Trust looks like talking to God, sharing our complaints, seeking God’s help, and then recommitting ourselves to believe in who God is and what He has done—even as the trial continues. 

Lament is how we endure. It is how we trust. It is how we wait. 

Notes:

*I’m grateful for Rebekah Eklund’s category of nonpassive patience, which I changed to active patience here. See Rebekah Ann Eklund, “Lord Teach Us How to Grieve: Jesus’ Laments and Christian Hope,” (ThD diss., Duke Divinity School, 2012).