The Place of Lament

“Surely, this is not God’s will for me.”

It was a statement born out of an extreme trial, a thought that came back over and over again, bouncing off the pain, like a relentless pinball machine. As my friend said it, I could hear the weariness in her voice. It was an echo that reverberated through my own heart, through the years of past difficulties and the long moments of present hurts. 

Sometimes it felt like God was absent in my pain. 

As we cope with the traumatic, the unexpected, the sorrowful, we tend to categorize them as something that has derailed the life God intended for us. Hearing my friend’s statement made me realize I had put my own circumstances somewhere on the periphery of my life- something I had to get through so that I could continue living the life I was meant to live. So I had prayed for rescue, thinking rescue was the only viable option. 

But God hadn’t brought that rescue, and I was drowning in a sea of despair.

As I prayed for my friend and dealt with my own impending sorrow, I turned to the story of Elijah. He had just had his monumental victory on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). God had displayed his greatness, and Elijah had felt the elation of triumph against the false gods of his day. I can relate to Elijah’s strength of purpose as he entreats God to show his power. It is a privilege to serve God on the mountaintop as idols fall and fire explodes from the heavens.

I have been on the mountaintop.

But the story continues to play out unexpectedly, and God doesn’t change hearts like we think he will. Elijah receives a death threat and flees into the wilderness. Jezebel knows her gods did not answer, but she continues on a war path against Elijah and his God. I wonder why God did not change her heart and bring her to repentance? Wouldn’t that have been a glorious turn in Elijah’s story? Wouldn’t it be better if our obedience resulted in quick and decisive deliverance from the worst of our problems? 

But instead our problems grow, and we descend into despair.

It is where we find Elijah, and sometimes, this part of the story is hard to read. Fire from heaven makes an intriguing chapter, but this weak, woeful, weary prophet has us a bit uncomfortable. Elijah falls into a sort of despondency and wallows in miserable disillusionment. I would prefer he put a brave face on, masking the true torment he is feeling, but Elijah does something in the wilderness that most of us have a difficult time doing- something that is real and raw and necessary in the midst of life’s unrelenting struggles. 

He is honest with God, saying, “It is enough, O Lord, take away my life” (1 Kings 19:4b). 

I can feel the weight of that “enough”- enough tears, enough fear, enough pain, enough sorrow. It is the “enough” of the prayed for resolution that never comes, the healing or justice or salvation that is nowhere to be seen. It is the “enough” of not wanting to go on, just wanting the fight to be over.

Elijah is in a wilderness of lament, and it is a difficult place to be.

It is an exhausting and lonely place, because no one really understands the deepest struggles of your heart or the depths of the sorrow you are carrying. Even just trying to convey it is a tiring endeavor. His is a weariness that is so much more than physical exhaustion. It is an emotional dread, a spiritual rawness, a feeling of exposure to the worst that life in a fallen world can dish out. Elijah’s lament is an accumulation of the stand off with the prophets of Baal, the excruciation of waiting for God to send rain, and the realization that none of it seemed to have mattered. Where was the turning of hearts that he had prayed for, the revival he had hoped for, the fall of a wicked dynasty that he had fought for? Where was God’s miraculous deliverance?

But God doesn’t offer deliverance. Instead, he steps into the prophet’s suffering and acknowledges the pain: “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you” (vs.6- 7). 

I want to weep with joy when I get to this part of the story, because God’s grace is so evident. Understanding human limits, he meets Elijah in his despondency, but he doesn’t scold him for sleeping. When God finds us in our weariness and disillusionment and pain, he doesn’t reprimand us for our weakness. “For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14).

So, he gives us the strength to go on.

Elijah “went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights” (vs. 8). You think the worst is over for this man of God, but he continues to struggle, taking up residence in a cave. I love the honest humanity that is written as Elijah wrestles with the dissonance of what he hoped would be and what is. You just kind of feel like he wants to be left alone at this point, but God doesn’t leave him alone.

God joins him in his suffering and invites his lament, asking “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Then Elijah pours out his lament to the One who stands near, ready to listen.

Are you in a wilderness of discouragement or a cave of despair? Has the road led you to sickness or constant pain? Have you been estranged from a loved one and felt the tearing of your heart at the abandonment? Are you spending your days caring for an aging parent or a spouse with dementia? Are you watching a child grow weak with an incurable sickness? The pain is unbearable. The tears are exhausting. Don’t bear the weight of it alone. 

Ask God the difficult questions and give voice to your lament.

Then get ready for the difficulty to continue and remember that God is still God. He unleashes a torrent of violence upon Elijah’s sanctuary, that “tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord” (vs. 11b). You’d think that the God who brought fire from heaven would manifest himself in the spectacular, but instead, he comes in “a low whisper” (vs. 12), reminding us that he does not always intervene in our lives with miraculous deliverance.

Most often, he is there almost imperceptibly, in the mundane everyday as well as the unrelenting difficulties we all find ourselves in. In our lament, he draws us close to himself and whispers, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

Elijah was one of the great prophets, but he wasn’t perfect. Some have called him the “barely obeying prophet” at this point in his journey, but I’m okay with that. It is somehow comforting to see God carrying Elijah as he finishes his tasks and to know that the unanswered questions of this chapter in his life are a part of a grand crescendo. His failures highlight God’s faithfulness and point to a greater prophet, a prophet who, years later, would also lament the path God had called him to and ask for deliverance, but God did not grant him deliverance either. Like Elijah, Jesus was “sorrowful, even to death” (Matt. 26:38), but unlike Elijah, he obeyed completely, faithfully, perfectly. 

“Not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39).

In my Savior’s obedience, I find the strength to go on and believe that the path he has for me is good and right. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, “Therefore, having this [gospel] ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.” As my friend continues to walk through her difficult circumstances, I can see this ministry working in her, drawing her closer to the Savior. I can see it in myself as I cling all the tighter to Jesus, my lament giving way to beautiful hope.

Surely, this is God’s will for us. 

“When your questions don't have answers

And you just can't understand it

When your mind just won't stop running

And the tears just keep on coming

You don't have to explain it

He hears you before you can speak

Come with me, let's take it to Jesus”

(“Take It To Jesus” by Anna Golden and Kari Jobe)