At Home in Georgia

Suffering and Lament

08:50, Saturday, December 8, 2007 .. 0 comments .. Link

As I continue to follow the story of the Myhre's in Uganda, I'm amazed by the insight of Dr. Jennifer Myhre in the midst of this turmoil and her response even in the middle of it all. She says....

"I came across a book by Michael Card called “A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching out to God in the Lost Language of Lament.” .... He opens the first chapter: “Before there were drops of rain, human tears fell in the garden, and that was when lament began.” His premise is that the Bible is full of the songs of complaint, frustration, sorrow, even anger; because the path to God is a “tearful trail.”

I want to copy here a paragraph from this book’s forward by Eugene Peterson:
It is also necessary as a witness, a Jesus-witness to the men and women who are trying to live a life that avoids suffering at all costs, including the cost of their own souls. For at least one reason why people are uncomfortable with tears and the sight of suffering is that it is a blasphemous assault on their precariously maintained . . spirituality of the pursuit of happiness. They want to avoid evidence that things are not right with the world as it is—without Jesus (and Job, David, and Jeremiah), without love, without faith, without sacrifice. It is a lot easier to keep the American faith if they don’t have to look into the face of suffering, if they don’t have to listen to our laments, if they don’t have to deal with our tears.
So learning the language of lament is not only necessary to restore Christian dignity to suffering and repentance and death, it is necessary to provide a Christian witness to a world that has no language for and is therefore oblivious to the glories of wilderness and cross.

I hope that many have the grace to weep and pray with Bundibugyo, and so discover the wilderness where God’s presence flames."

~Michelle
Leave a Comment

{ Last Page } { Page 58 of 73 } { Next Page }

About Me

Links

Myhre's Blog - Uganda
My Etsy Shop

________________
Add this to your site

At Home in Georgia

Suffering and Lament

About Me

Links

Categories

Recent Entries

Friends