A lyric from a Caedmon's Call song came to mind as we wrap up this week of lament. "I come from a long line of leavers. Out of the garden gate with an apple in their hands." Isn't that the truth of it? We cry out, we find God, our trustworthy target, we lay out our laundry list of needs, then we....leave? Sometimes that's true. Sometimes we get the answer we want, then proudly skip away to show all our friends how we are all fine, everything is fine. That is our human nature, inherited from the original leavers. But that's the difference between a complaint and a lament. A complaint is just an inconvenience. Something that's bothering me now, but when it's fixed it's forgotten. But a lament is grief. It's suffering and sorrow. It's deep regret. A true lament will change us. When we are truly grieved, we don't leave. We stay. We wait. Because we know now that God is loyal--loyal in His love toward us, yes; but loyal to Himself and His promises. When we see God bring resolution, even if it's not the way we expected, we see it as right. And we hunger and we thirst for more of this rightness. It heals our grief, our sorrow, our regret.
But how long do we wait for resolution to come? Is any amount of time too long? Do we snatch our list back from God's hands and try to fix it ourselves? Um, yes. Does that work out? Never. Ever. In our main verse for the week, the author is writing this after the fact. He saw it play out and he's giving us a play by play. The wait of the Hebrews was long-- centuries!! But his reaction to a resolved lament was worship. "I have now brought the first of the land's produce that you, LORD, have given me." The lepers started out with a good lament. They cried out, they focused on the trustworthy target, they laid out their needs. But 9 of them were only complainers, they were leavers. The one was a true lamenter, a waiter, a worshiper. And he was saved. Truly. For now, but also for ever.
For a Christian, our very first lament is leading us to salvation. "Blessed are the poor in spirit" is square one. It's us crying out--scared, alone. "Blessed are those who mourn" is crying to the only One who can fix us, because we finally figured out we can't do it ourselves. "Blessed are the humble" is us making our list of all the things we need, all the things we lack, all the things that are broken. Then the last one separates the leavers from the stayers. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." Being fixed isn't enough for the stayers. We want to know the Fixer. We want to be known by Him. We hunger and thirst for what is right according to His standard.
We will spend the next two weeks looking for these 4 elements in two different kinds of lament--individual and communal. We will spend the last week seeing the promise for resolution. But for now, let's meditate on what we've learned. We DO come from a long line of leavers, beginning with Adam and Eve until now. But we come from a great legacy of stayers, too. Waiters. Worshipers. May that be said of us.
"Blessed be the LORD! Day after day He bears our burdens; God is our salvation. Our God is a God of salvation, and escape from death belongs to the LORD my Lord." Psalm 68:19-20
No comments:
Post a Comment