Lament

Last fall a year ago Jan and I and some parishioners from our church attended a small retreat in the hills above our small town. It was beautiful and isolated there, a nice getaway. On the second day of the retreat a Scripture of the day was read which soon took on personal as well as global meaning for me.


I was asked to read the Saturday morning prayer from the Old Testament, Lamentations chapter 5, verses 1-22. I stood up to read the long selection and about halfway through, very suddenly, I choked up. The words I was reading were beginning to take on a life of their own. They were being directed from somewhere else, deep within me. And they flowed out of my mouth attached to deep sorrow for my own sins. My mind seemed to descend to my heart, as I took on the message as my own. The scripture was a lamentation for the Jewish people, and as I continued to read I also began to think of two Jewish women I had met the week before, while they visited our town on a bicycle trip. They were artists with whom I had immediately connected, and I invited them to my home. We shared our spiritual journeys, and I was blessed by their beautiful and meaningful Judaic creations, which we viewed on the internet. My reading became a prayer for them.

The experience I had reading from Lamentations was powerful. I felt sorrow for all that the Jewish people have been through for so long. I felt the heart of the Jewish people, as the words of Lamentations, with spirit and meaning, expressed the essence of what repentance truly is.

A couple of weeks later the financial institutions of the US basically crumbled. As frightening and awful as it was, in some ways I rejoiced, as I saw the consequences of vice and greed come to fruition. I have felt that we have reaped our reward for our sin. We in America have been so focused on material pursuits that we have not sought or heeded spiritual help. On so many fronts around the world we have ignored the cries of the suffering, and left it to others (or to no one) to feed the hungry and dispossessed. We have left our faith behind for the gods of wealth, power, and the tangible physical world. As people lose their homes, jobs, retirement accounts, all they have worked for, due to greed on many levels and in many parts of society, we see Congressmen scrambling to “fix” the problem. The words of Lamentations ring prophetically, as if a bleak future is upon us: “Our inheritance has passed to aliens, our homes to barbarians.” From the highest paid corporate chairman to the blue collar worker at the bottom of the rung, all of us have had our minds on nothing but more, more, more… and this is our nation’s sin. We have filled our lives with goods and disregarded our souls. Even eight months later, as word came through television’s pulpit that “we have reached the bottom, now things will begin to get better,” I cringed. There had not been enough time. The object of this downturn has less to do with our things than it does with our hearts.

Repentance is disregarded when life is easy. We are too busy to be bothered, or we dare to think we must be right with Him because we are blessed. We ignore the needy while in pursuit of our next toy or experience. Repentance, if is exists at all, comes as grace at the table, or a superficial assessment of ourselves that ignores the depth of our corruption. In good times, our repentance is cursory; and we continue to be blessed. Yet fears and anxiety do set in, because there is that innate knowledge that life just does not play out like this. Someone always pays the piper, and the balance sheet must be kept. No, even in good times, repentance, like the repentance in Lamentations, must be wholly engulfing. It must be a deep and utter sorrow for one’s actions and inactions, a sorrow that cleanses and empties a person completely, making one available for the seed of forgiveness that enters the heart. The Lord often warned the Israelites even during times of plenty to “put the plow to their hearts…” That message has not changed. We can ask that the Lord put the plow to our own hearts. The horror that Lamentations prophesies, were it laid on us in its entirety, would be unfathomable to our modern existence. Yet it is the horror of many people who live on this planet, and we need to see that such desolation is entirely possible here, too. We are our brothers’ keepers, and we need to incorporate that message into our hearts. We need to be diligent and watchful, prepared in an instant to give testimony and to help our neighbors. Maybe life is not tearing us up yet, but God can keep us real, if we ask Him. Therefore, repent of your sins, to the depths of your heart.