Faithful Pathways: Cry

Another bombing. More laws set in place to discriminate against God's children. The spoken solution from a front-runner for president that we should embrace water-boarding, because "they"kill, we should torture. Families whose children have been accepted to college face the real heartache of not being able to pay the bill. Another bombing. Another shooting.

How do people of faith deal with the grief that overwhelms? What response is acceptable when hope seems completely out of reach and our ability to effect is roughly equivalent to the ability to pick up our car?

Cry.

"Cry aloud to the Lord! Oh Lord of daughter Zion! Let tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite!"

There are times that is all you can do.

But crying to the Lord has accomplished great things. In the darkness that gathers for us this weekend, tears might be our greatest offering.

Lamentations 2:10-18New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

10 The elders of daughter Zion
    sit on the ground in silence;
they have thrown dust on their heads
    and put on sackcloth;
the young girls of Jerusalem
    have bowed their heads to the ground.

11 My eyes are spent with weeping;
    my stomach churns;
my bile is poured out on the ground
    because of the destruction of my people,
because infants and babes faint
    in the streets of the city.

12 They cry to their mothers,
    “Where is bread and wine?”
as they faint like the wounded
    in the streets of the city,
as their life is poured out
    on their mothers’ bosom.

13 What can I say for you, to what compare you,
    O daughter Jerusalem?
To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you,
    O virgin daughter Zion?
For vast as the sea is your ruin;
    who can heal you?

14 Your prophets have seen for you
    false and deceptive visions;
they have not exposed your iniquity
    to restore your fortunes,
but have seen oracles for you
    that are false and misleading.

15 All who pass along the way
    clap their hands at you;
they hiss and wag their heads
    at daughter Jerusalem;
“Is this the city that was called
    the perfection of beauty,
    the joy of all the earth?”

16 All your enemies
    open their mouths against you;
they hiss, they gnash their teeth,
    they cry: “We have devoured her!
Ah, this is the day we longed for;
    at last we have seen it!”

17 The Lord has done what he purposed,
    he has carried out his threat;
as he ordained long ago,
    he has demolished without pity;
he has made the enemy rejoice over you,
    and exalted the might of your foes.

18 Cry aloud[a] to the Lord!
    O wall of daughter Zion!
Let tears stream down like a torrent
    day and night!
Give yourself no rest,
    your eyes no respite!