The Practice of Lament in the Midst of Trauma: Developing a

Framework of Care and Healing from the Lament Psalms

Chris Ponniah (1010227)

Introduction

Life is full of storms. These storms are unavoidable. When

these storms arise, there is a strong desire to get out of the

storms as quickly as possible. Prayers asking God to provide a

quick fix becomes the norm. However, not all storms let up

with these quick fix prayers. There are many storms where

prayers to God bring no ease to their fury. Instead, they

become worse causing intense grief and pain.

My own personal experience over the past five years of

journeying through increasingly furious storms has led me to

this belief. It started with a family trauma that I became

aware of in 2008. This trauma kept escalating till 2012. The

pain and grief of that trauma still remains today with its

effects leading to further traumas that also continue on.

Then, in September 2010, the earthquakes hit Christchurch.

The grief and pain I had to deal with as I pastored a church

and provided support to a devastated community has multiplied

as people try to come to terms with living in a city that will

never be the same again. Dealing with the aftermath of the

earthquakes and the effects in the eastern suburbs continues

to have a negative impact on the lives of people that I am

supporting. Finally, another family trauma hit a few months

ago causing my wife and I a huge amount of stress trying to

provide support for family members who not only live alone in

another city but are also struggling to come to terms with

this same trauma.

All these storms changed the world that I was used to and

caused me much grief, anger and pain. As a consequence, I am

no longer the same person that I was a few years ago. I have

spent the last couple of years asking “Why?”. “Why do I have

to face such furious storms?” “Why does God allow this to

happen to me?” “Why is God increasing the intensity of these

storms and not hearing my prayers to free me?” These storms

have knocked me back and left me feeling powerless, making me

more negative, more reactive and more aggressive as I seek to

keep my head above water.

I am now however, at the stage where the “why” questions no

longer bother me. I spent five years asking the “why”

questions but God remained silent. It was as if he had

forsaken me as I struggled through those five years trying to

make sense of the pain and grief that I felt. From once

feeling abandoned, I have now shifted from wanting to know

“why?” to wanting to know “How?”. “How can I live within these

circumstances that I am in?” “How can I swim through these

storms of life instead of being overwhelmed by the rough

seas?” I am accepting of the fact that my world has changed.

The family traumas and the earthquakes have changed that with

which I was once familiar and have created a new world. My

conclusion is that the only way I can survive is to come to

terms with this new reality and learn to live in that new

world. It is as Pemberton says, “We live in a world that is

beyond our control, and life is in a constant flux of change.

So we have a decision to make; keep trying to control a storm

that is not going to go away or to start learning how to live

within the rain”1.

One way that I have found an ability to survive in this new

reality is by reading the Psalms. I have found an affinity in

the psalms of lament in which the psalmists seem to have gone

through what I have been going through. This essay, using my

own personal journey as an illustration, explores how the

Psalms of Lament can provide a model to help people going

through deep pain and grief find a path that takes them from

disorientation to reorientation. This faith journey helps

people discover a new faith in which to face a new normal.

Seasons of Life

Going through an emotional upheaval in my life brought me to a

place of liminality, confused and frustrated, not certain of

who I was or what I had become. Jenkins writes about how

institutionalised arrangements and organised activities create

boundaries that provide security to an individual2. When these

arrangements and boundaries get changed or shifted, people

find themselves to be transitionally liminal where they are

in-between who they used to be and who they might become.

Being in this liminal zone causes people to feel unsettled.

1 Glenn Pemberton, Hurting with God: Learning to Lament with the Psalms (Texas: ACU Press, 2012), 23.2 R. Jenkins, Social Identity (London: Routledge, n.d.).

This was how I felt - stuck in a place where I had lost my

bearings and existing in a place of ambiguity. All my thoughts

and dreams of family, church and community life were wrecked

because of circumstances and situations that were beyond my

control. I was no longer in charge of my own destiny. Rather I

was out of control and totally perplexed in the new strange

zone I found myself in.

Brueggemann talks about this idea when he describes the

seasons of life as a movement between states of orientation,

disorientation and reorientation3. Being in a season of

orientation is being in a place of security where a person is

well-settled and life is comfortable because everything is

running smoothly. But when a sudden crisis hits and the

security is taken away, we enter into a season of

disorientation where the world we are familiar with is gone.

This is the place I am now in. I have moved out of a settled

orientation into a season of disorientation. Brueggemann

describes this season of disorientation as “the dismantling of

the old, known world and a relinquishment of safe, reliable

confidence in God’s good creation”4. This describes the place I

am in perfectly. The old world that I was used to is no longer

there and I am full of questions about God and if he really

cares. The reassurance I have from Brueggemann is that this

season of disorientation eventually enters into a season of

reorientation.

3 Pemberton, Hurting with God: Learning to Lament with the Psalms, 63.4 Ibid., 64.

Bruggemann points out that the psalms express these states or

seasons of orientation, disorientation and reorientation.

Psalms of orientation reflect the ordinariness of life and

include psalms of creation, wisdom and blessing. Psalms of

disorientation are psalms of lament and are strongly connected

to situations of displacement. They focus on the depths of

human experience written by psalmists filled with pain, hurt,

suffering, abandonment and anger. Finally, the Psalms of

reorientation are made up of songs of awe and celebration as

they recognise God’s intervention in taking them from a pit of

darkness and disorientation into a new orientation. This new

orientation is not a return back to the old where everything

made sense, but is about entering into a new normal where the

journey of faith causes us to look to God and trust him once

again in a different reality. This whole experience of

disorientation and reorientation plays a significant part in

the book of Psalms.

Lament Psalms as spiritual complaints during the season of

disorientation

Brueggemann refers to the Psalms as the voice of humanity that

speaks about life the way it really is. They express a “common

elation, shared grief, and communal rage that besets us all”5.

Jones describes the Psalms as an “honest dialogue with God. In

this dialogue, nothing is held back. It is raw, down and

dirty. The spoken words are evocative. They are relentless.

To this end, they are true. The words of the Psalms speak to5 Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit (Oregon: Cascade Books, 2007), 1.

the very core of human experience in ways other language

cannot begin to approach.”6 The Psalms express the emotion of

the writers in their worship of God and communicate different

feelings, or thoughts based on the situations the psalmists

found themselves in.

Whilst the psalmists were in the season of orientation, the

psalms they wrote expressed the security that existed in their

lives. However, upon going through the psalms, there is a

realisation that this season of orientation and security is

not a permanent state. The psalmists also wrote about life

filled with transitional liminal spaces creating

disorientation and ambiguity. The season of safe orientation

sooner or later gives way to a “churning, disruptive

experience of dislocation and relocation”7. So common is this

feeling in life that the psalms of lament cover 40% of the

book of Psalms even though they make up only one category of

Psalms8.

The psalms of lament express the cries of distress of the

psalmists. They record their complaints, anger and pain. The

psalmists did not try to hide these painful experiences but

were willing to take down their masks to show the humanness of

godly people who felt tpain and anger in the season of

6 Jones, “The Psalms of Lament and the Transformation of Sorrow: EBSCOhost,” J. Pastor. Care Couns. 61, no. Nos 1-2 (n.d.): 47.7 Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit, 6.8 Pemberton, Hurting with God: Learning to Lament with the Psalms, 31.

disorientation. In reading the lament psalms, it seems that

the psalmists in voicing their pain, anger and anguish were

acting in opposition to their faith. Yet people of faith like

Moses (Psalm 90), David (38 times), and the temple leaders

(Ethan – Psalm 80; Korah – Psalm 42-43; Heman – Psalm 88;

Asaph – Psalm 77 & 79) demonstrated that laments were not

necessarily a sign of sin in their life or a lack of faith,

but a valid expression of faith, especially in times of crisis

and trauma. When Jesus was on the cross (Matthew 27: 46) , he

quoted a psalm of lament when he cried out “My God, my God why

have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). It was not a cry of

faithlessness but a cry of honest anguish. The psalms of

lament do not dismiss, deny, or attempt to avoid the human

emotions that come when one is in pain or sorrow. Neither do

they deny a lack of faith in God by expressing these emotions.

Instead, they depict a God who invites his people to honestly

pour out the pain and grief they are going through to to the

one who is able to help them through.

Thus, the journey from plea to praise in the lament psalms is

a journey of faith9. It takes the psalmist from a place of deep

despair, pain and alienation, to a place of deep trust,

confidence and gratitude. This journey of faith does not turn

a blind eye to the reality of brokenness and grief but

acknowledges that God is at work in those times as well. One

9 Jones, “The Psalms of Lament and the Transformation of Sorrow: EBSCOhost,” 48.

thing that the Psalms of lament have in common is that they

display a deep faith in God in the midst of pain10.

Brueggemann refers to the life of faith of the psalmists being

seen in two distinct stages11. The first stage in the life of

faith is when the psalmists enters a season of disorientation.

Having gone through a season of settled orientation and then

entering into a season of disorientation takes away the

confidence and security they had when they were going through

the season of settled orientation. The cries and pleas of the

psalmists in the lament psalms express this place of chaotic

disorientation where nothing makes sense. The second stage in

the life of faith is when the psalmist moved from the tough

place of disorientation into a new life awareness that is

different from the original. This move comes from an assurance

that the psalmist feels that having voiced the pain of

disorientation, God has now heard him and he can rest in the

assurance that God is in control of this new perspective. This

pattern of lament followed by praise is the psalmists’

expression of their journey through pain. Brueggemann, in

summarising the work of Claus Westermann, concludes “I think

it is safe to deduce from (Westermann’s) form-critical

analysis the following relational dynamic. In these psalms,

Israel moves from articulation of hurt and anger, to

submission of them to God, and finally to relinquishment.

Functionally and experientially, the verbal articulation and

10 Pemberton, Hurting with God: Learning to Lament with the Psalms, 30.11 Jones, “The Psalms of Lament and the Transformation of Sorrow: EBSCOhost.”

the faithful submission to God are prerequisites for

relinquishment.”12

Developing a Framework for the Lament Process

Whilst Bruggemann breaks the lament psalms into two parts,

lament and praise, Pemberton further breaks the lament psalms

down into five elements13. These elements are address,

complaint, request, motivation and confidence. He calls them

the contours of lament where there is a structure to the

lament instead of it being an “emotional torrent of words”14.

In the address, the psalmist cries out to God with a short

address like “O Lord” or “my God”. The psalmist then goes on

with the complaint where he describes the difficulty or

difficulties he is facing. Once he had laid out the complaint

to God, the psalmist then makes his request followed by an

attempt to motivate God to act. Finally the psalmist ends with

praise and confidence in God.15

What Bruggemann and Pemberton both recognise in the lament

psalms is the journey the psalmist takes in moving from

voicing complaint to singing a doxology of praise to God. It

appears that by lamenting, the psalmist has a therapeutic

experience during the shift from despair to praise. Vocalising12 Walter Brueggemann, “The Costly Loss of Lament.: EBSCOhost,”n.d., 99–100, n.p. [cited 25 September 2014]. Online: http://library.laidlaw.ac.nz:2179/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=33&sid=00bb55ca-e248-4c1a-89cc-f58f52e29911%40sessionmgr114&hid=128.13 Pemberton, Hurting with God: Learning to Lament with the Psalms, 66.14 Ibid., 65.15 Ibid., 66–72.

the negative emotions that come from a sense of disorientation

eventually allows the psalmist to reaffirm his trust in God.

There may not have been immediate relief from voicing the

pain, but it was enough to cause the psalmist to remain

faithful to God. Stanton illustrates this point when he

commented how Psalm 13: 6 highlights the fact that “honest

prayer may bring aid and hope to the desperate pray-er”16

The therapeutic dimension of the psalms was not just for the

psalmists but for all present and future hearers and readers

of their psalms. Tull acknowledges the aestheticizing effect

of the lament psalms on the readers by stating “In one and the

same act of empathetic reading, we both aestheticize the

speaker of the Psalm, perceiving artistic beauty where the

psalmist only see pain, and by projecting ourselves into the

subiectum, identify the psalmist’s tone and petitions with our

own.”17

Because of the therapeutic nature of the lament psalms,

creating a framework for lamenting may be beneficial for

people entering into a season of disorientation . Using

Bruggeman’s two stages of lament and Pemberton’s five elements

of the lament psalms, a four step framework could be

developed. These four steps are:

1. Cry of Despair

16 David Charney, “Maintaining Innocence before a Divine Hearer: Deliberative Rhetoric in Psalm 22, Psalm 17, and Psalm7,” Biblic. Interpret. 21, no. 1 (2013): 34.17 Ibid.

2. Complaint of Hopelessness

3. Conviction of how God should act

4. Confidence in God

In lamenting the psalmists voice their frustration with a

short initial cry of despair before expanding on the

complaint.

“O Lord, how many are my foes!” (Psalm 3: 1)

“Why, O LORD, do you stand far away?” (Psalm 10: 1)

“How long O Lord?” (Psalm 13: 1)

Hear a just cause O God” (Psalm 17:1)

They then add the details to their frustrations in their

complaint.

“Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul,

there is no salvation for him in God. “ (Psalm 3:2)

“Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all say long?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (Psalm 13: 1b-2)

The psalmist ends the complaint by giving a reason why God

should act. This reason becomes a conviction for the psalmist

to hold on to. Bruggemann lists seven reasons the psalmists

frequently give to persuade God to act18. They are God’s

reputation (13:4; 25:11; 57:5), consistency with God’s past

actions (22: 4-5; 143: 5), the psalmist’s sense of guilt (25:

11; 38: 18), the psalmist’s innocence (26: 3-7; 35: 7; 69:7),

a promise of praise (6: 5; 22: 22), the helplessness of the

psalmist (25: 16; 69: 1) and the psalmist’s trust in the Lord

(17: 8-9; 43: 2). This conviction causes the psalmist to pray

persuasively for God to act. These psalms of lament follow

the pattern of lament; the cry of despair, the specific

complaint and the reason why God should act on their behalf.

Finally, they find a fresh confidence in God that brings

praise to their lips.

“Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name.

Then the righteous will gather about me because of your

goodness to me.” (Psalm 142: 7)

“I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.” (Psalm 13:6)

The Lament Framework in Pastoral Care

When trauma hits an individual, family or community, lives

change irrevocably. All of a sudden there is a shift from a

safe orientation to a chaotic disorientation. When an

individual, or a group of people are in a state of

disorientation and are feel immovable, it can lead to further 18 Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 71.

distress, trauma, psychological and physical illness. Levine

explains that traumatised people “are unable to overcome the

anxiety of their experience. They remain overwhelmed by the

event, defeated and terrified. Virtually imprisoned by their

fear, they are unable to re-engage in life.”19 Ulanov describes

how people respond to trauma, “We swap aliveness for

restriction in order to feel safer, avoid pain, survive some

blow that seems to us unbearable, that would destroy us. We

fear we are empty inside so we cover it up with manufactured

control, or made-up excitement, or self-promotion. The

emptiness can never change if we refuse to experience it, and

in the company of an other. We need an other to depend on when

we turn to face our deadness. Whatever we are afraid of, it

requires our attention; we must go down into it, look around,

not knowing if and how we will come out.”20 Van Deusen

Hunsinger concludes that healing can only occur when the

traumatised person starts piecing together “a coherent

narrative, creating a web of meaning around unspeakable events

while remaining fully connected emotionally both to themselves

and to their listener.”21

Using this framework in pastoral care provides a tool that

could be used in counselling or when dealing with grief. It

provides a way for a traumatised person to unpack their

feelings and emotions. They could be given guidelines to write19 Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, “Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel and Pastoral Care,” Theol. Today 68, no. 1 (2011):12.20 Ibid., 16.21 Ibid., 17.

their own psalm of lament. Weems, in the preface of her book,

Psalms of Lament, writes about how her life crashed around her

when her son Todd was killed less than an hour after his

twenty-first birthday. One of the friends who supported her

was Bruggemann who encouraged to write her own lament psalms

which she did and later published22. This is one of her psalms

of lament.

O God, find me!

I am lost

In the valley of grief,

and I cannot see my way out.

My friends leave baskets of balm

at my feet,

but I cannot bend to touch

the healing

to my heart.

They call me to leave

this valley,

but I cannot follow

the faint sound

of their voices.

They sing their songs

of love,

but the words fade

and vanish in the wind.

They knock,

22 Ann Weems, Psalms of Lament (Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), xx.

but I cannot find the door.

They shout to me,

but I cannot find the voice

to answer.

O God, find me!

Come into this valley

and find me!

Bring me out of this land

of weeping.

O you to whom I belong,

find me!

I will wait here,

for you have never failed

to come to me.

I will wait here,

for you have always been faithful.

I will wait here,

for you are my God,

and you have promised

that you counted the hairs on my head.23

The writing of the psalms of lament not only helped Weems work

through her grief for the loss of her son, but also, kept her

holding on to a covenant God who understood what she was going

through. Part of providing pastoral care is to help the person

who is grieving or struggling with pain or anger to voice that

emotion. Applying the four step framework of the lament23 Ibid., 11–12.

process, the traumatised person is helped by firstly voicing

the hurt and pain by the cry of despair and the complaint of

hopelessness. Ignoring the feelings they have, or trying to

hide them, will not help them on the healing journey.

Next, they need to recognise that they are in a covenant

relationship with God. God promises that he will be their God

and they will be his people. This means that in covenant

relationship, God promises his presence and resources to help

us through trauma. The conviction that the person in need of

pastoral care has with regards to how God should act as a

covenant partner is an important part of the healing process.

Instead of struggling with why they are in the traumatic

situation, or blaming others for causing them to be in that

situation, they can come to God as their covenant partner and

slowly build their confidence and trust in God to lead them

into a new self-awareness. Using the lament framework in

pastoral care, the traumatised person is able to vocalise

their grief, pain, and anger to God, crying out to him for

deliverance and finding confidence that God has heard their

cry.

Understanding this covenant relationship with God is a key

part of the framework. The seven reasons Bruggemann lists

help point to areas in the covenant relationship that a person

requiring pastoral care needs to bring before God. As Van

Deusen Hunsinger reiterates, prayers of lament are faith’s

only alternative to despair.24 Instead of protecting one from

pain, the voicing of the traumatised person’s pain allows them

to find hope and confidence that God has heard their cries.

They are then able to enter into a place of healing and

restoration.

The Lament Framework in Worship

The lament framework also helps enhance worship within the

local church. Various writers have acknowledged that lament is

being neglected in our church worship.25. Of late, the church

has become more focused on the triumphs of the Christian faith

whilst ignoring the setbacks that we encounter on the

Christian journey. Churches that have been influenced by the

charismatic renewal are very good at providing worship that

focuses on the highs but are not great in focussing on the

lows.26 Brueggemann believed that lament played a significant

role in ancient Israel, and it is significantly important for

the church to rediscover this expression of faith. He comments

that in its songs, testimonies and prayers, the church only

knows how to praise.27

24 van Deusen Hunsinger, “Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel and Pastoral Care,” 22.25 Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984); JohnD. Witvliet, Worship Seeking Understanding: Windows into Christian Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishers, 2003); John D. Witvliet, The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship: A Brief Introduction and Guide to Resources (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).26 Alistair Mckenzie, “Learning to Lament in Aotearoa,” in Spiritual Complaints: The Theology and Practice of Lament, n.d., 175.27 Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary, 51.

Instead of stifling lament and seeing it as a lack of faith,

the church needs to explore how a worship of lament could

bring meaning and healing for those who are in a season of

disorientation by encouraging focus on grief and pain in the

words of songs, prayers and liturgy. If we are to be authentic

and honest, worshipping God in spirit and truth, then psalms,

hymns and spiritual songs of lament must be a part of the

present-day church’s liturgy.

Lamentation is part of the human experience of journey. There

are times when the church celebrates and rejoices. The church

is going through a season where life is stable and the people

are feeling close to God. However, there are times when the

church enters a transitional period where the stability they

have been enjoying disappears and they enter into a season of

disorientation because of a major crisis. Suddenly, the church

finds itself in a place that is different from where they used

to be. During this season of disorientation, singing songs of

praise and thanksgiving do not seem to be authentic with

regards to how the church is feeling. It is during those times

that the church needs to learn how to lament in worship.

Leder supports this idea that the church goes through a

journey filled with highs and lows. He describes the church as

worshipping in a time of transition.28 It is not yet the

perfect and blameless bride of Christ. In fact Leder says the

28 Arie C. Leder, “Holy God, Holy People, Holy Worship,” Calvin Theol. J. 43 (2008): 216–217.

church “is characterised by anything but holiness”29. The

church faces the highs and lows of the Christian journey,

disorder, rebellion, sin, natural disasters, and so on. If

these are all the normal experiences of the church then Leder

concludes that worship must take into account the transitional

character of God’s people and begin to focus not just on the

triumphalistic dream of the future, but also, the laments and

challenges we face living in this present age.

That was how the psalmists worshipped. There were times they

focused on the majesty of God and at other times they voiced

the frustrations, anger and grief they were experiencing.

Psalms of lament are a rightful means of worship as they give

the opportunity for God’s people to challenge God and to raise

and legitimate questions of justice in terms of social goods,

social access, and social power 30. As Bruggemann argues the

people of God are not called to be voiceless only to become a

passive, uncritical “nothing” devoid of initiative and unable

to question God31. For Brueggemann losing lament as part of

church life and worship is a loss of genuine covenant

interaction between God and His people. God’s presence with

his people was part of the covenant relationship. This

expectation of God’s presence is what led the psalmists to ask

where is God? To recover a liturgy of lament is to provide a

safe and sacred space where those who are suffering and in

29 Ibid., 24.30 Brueggemann, “The Costly Loss of Lament.: EBSCOhost,” 102–104.31 Ibid.

pain, and those who stand alongside the suffering, are able to

lament as a form of worship to God.

To apply the lament framework to worship, the church needs to

come together to lament during the painful and traumatic

seasons of church life. This can be on occassions where either

individuals or the whole church family are going through a

season of disorientation. Such occassions may be caused by an

individual’s sin, challenges experienced within the church

such as church divisions, or through painful upheavals

happening in society because of natural disasters or traumatic

events.

In this period the cry of despair becomes the call to worship.

The church is gathering unified in their feeling of despair

for either individuals, the whole church, or society. As the

call to lament is given, the church communes the feeling of

hopelessness through corporate complaint via hymns and psalms

of lament; prayers and liturgy of lament and sharing of the

stories of lament.

The lament then moves from the corporate sharing of pain and

grief to coming to God as the covenant partner and asking God

to act on behalf of the individuals, church, or society. It

then becomes a cry of hope, convinced that God will remain

true to His covenant and will act on behalf of His people

according to His covenant. Finally from this declaration of

hope, worship moves into a time of placing the confidence of

the church on God who remains faithful and ever true.

Worship of lament does not need to happen only when a crisis

or trauma is experienced. It could also be a part of the

church calendar where the church goes through a period of

lament, for example; during the season of Lent when the church

focuses on self-examination, or, in times when the church

focuses on the failings of society and the world to honour

God.

The Lament Framework in Mission

The lament framework not only works well in pastoral care or

in worship, but can also become a tool for the church’s

mission in society. Whilst Bruggemann focuses on the laments

that are addressed to God against someone else, or even

addressed against God himself, Suderman introduces a third

focus of lament and that is addressed to another person32. He

uses Psalm 55 as an example where the psalmist speaks to God

but then confronts a close friend directly. Westermann

highlights this social element of the lament psalms when he

states, “lamentation is a phenomenon characterised by three

determinant elements: the one who laments, God, and the other,

i.e., that circle of people among whom or against whom the one

who laments stands with a complaint.”33 By voicing the pain32 W. Derek Suderman, “The Cost of Losing Lament for the Community of Faith: On Bruggemann, Ecclesiology, and the Social Audience of Prayer,” J. Theol. Interpret. 6, no. 2 (2012): 204.33 Ibid., 203.

caused by another person or a group of people, the psalmist is

not just appealing to God, but is also, addressing his readers

and challenging them to respond in some manner that would

bring healing and closure. This idea of using lament as a

means to restore relationships and help societies move on is

used in many war-torn areas in the world. Nancy Lee, a

Fulbright scholar who studied postwar Croatian society,

states, “In the absence of lament, the status quo is more

likely to remain.” She goes on, “Unexpressed lament and

unresolved anger and grief may contribute to the current

social interactions in the former Yugoslavia. Pain over

atrocities committed long ago is cherished as desire for

revenge rather than expressed before God, who is believed to

be capable of alleviating suffering.”34

The opportunity for the church to be a listening community and

be channels of healing is seen in the role the church played

in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa.

This role was best summed up by Jorge Heine, the Chilean

ambassador to South Africa when he made the observation that

when the Commission finally closed its doors and handed the

final report to President Mandela, “Sitting at the hearings

held at the Central Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg

some time ago, watching archbishop Desmond Tutu say a prayer…I

could not help but reflect that this would have been

unthinkable in many countries where the separation of church

and state is taken seriously. Yet is seems to have worked in34 Brian L. Webster and David R. Beach, “The Place of Lament inthe Chritian Life,” Bibl. Sacra (2007): 399.

South Africa, where there is a great religious diversity but

where the strongly Christian subtext of repentance and

forgiveness that pervades the Commissions proceedings conveys

both the right message as to what is reconciliation all about.

It manages to put at ease humble, profoundly decent South

Africans who had been offered, often for the first time, the

opportunity to state their case.”35

In New Zealand, we have many examples of how the church has

played a vital role in helping communities and cultures lament

and grieve for the past wrongs. Services of lament have been

organised by churches for ANZAC Day, the anniversary of the

Christchurch earthquakes and the Pike River mining disaster.

The earthquakes in Christchurch and the Pike River mining

disaster gave an opportunity for the church to provide healing

and reconciliation by helping societies lament and find hope

in the midst of hopelessness. In times of social crisis, the

church can play a role officially, or unofficially, in

providing society a way forward to grieve for loss and to

embrace a fresh new confidence for the future.

Likewise, Waitangi Day can also provide an opportunity for the

church to honour the Treaty of Waitangi and be a memorial

acknowledging the pain and anguish Maori had to go through in

its history with Pakeha.

35 P.G.J. Meiring, “Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: The Role of the Faith Communities,” Verbum Eccles. 26, no. 1 (2005): 171.

Whatever opportunity there is for the church to provide

support through a local or national crisis, this journey can

follow a framework of lament by allowing people to offer cries

of despair and complaints of hopelessness. This is part of the

grief process that allows both individuals and society to

voice their pain, grief, anger and frustrations. By openly

facing up to their trauma people can start looking for

healing. The church can then offer healing by bringing a

message of hope that comes from a covenant keeping God.

Lamentation becomes an opportunity in which healing,

restoration, and reconciliation can be built. On behalf of a

broken society, the church can intercede to the God of

reconciliation to bring healing and restoration. When the

church works with the hurt in society they can become God’s

means of healing in society providing an opportunity for

people to place their confidence in God.

Conclusion

In developing the framework of lament, I have come to find a

way that would help me out of my personal place of grief and

pain and to trust God as my covenant partner who will act on

my behalf. I may not understand why I have had to face many

challenges over the past few years, but I hold on to the

conviction that God is a covenant God who keeps his love-

filled covenant to me. This helps me place my confidence in

God. I know that my current reality is not as the former, but

just as God was with me in the past he will be with me now in

my current situation. Honesty between God and I has cemented

the integrity of our relationship.

The purpose of this essay was to explore how through the

lament psalms a person can find hope and confidence in God

through a season of disorientation where there is pain, anger

and grief. The lament psalms give a framework that helps

people find confidence in God when they find it hard to see

beyond the trauma or the crisis they are in. This hope and

confidence is found by placing their conviction in a covenant-

keeping God who will not let his people down. Although God may

not always give us the reasons why we face trauma or crisis,

he promises that as the greater being in this covenant, he

will hear our cries of despair and complaints of hopelessness

and will act according to the covenant he has made with us.

For those in covenant relationship with God, it allows us to

stop struggling to make sense of the season of disorientation.

They allow God to work in and through us to take us out of

this season and into a new season of reorientation whereby we

will be able to be grateful and worshipful to a holy,

righteous and gracious God. The fact that God will always keep

his side of the covenant gives us the assurance that whilst we

may lament at the apparent loss of covenantal interaction and

challenge God to keep his side of the covenant, we can come

out of the lament with the confidence that God will act in

accordance with his covenant promises.

This lament framework provides opportunity for individuals,

the church and society to find healing and hope through

lament. They can voice their distress and sense of

hopelessness, finding conviction that the covenant-keeping God

will remain true to his word. In lament they can find the hope

to keep pressing on through the season of disorientation until

they enter into a season of reorientation.

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