Poets in scripture imagined our prayers drifting up gently like smoke from incense, fragrant and pleasing to God. It is a beautiful image, a sweet comforting truth. God bends his head and inhales our words and songs, considering our needs. But sometimes our prayers cannot drift. They cannot be gentle. Prayers often must clamber the heavens shouting, sputtering, and making a spectacle of themselves and us. Lest we perish because our pain is so deep, so sharp unless we storm heaven shouting for God to hear our complaint.
Like this song When I Pray from Darrell Evans. It is no quiet, gentle prayer but a raucous rock and roll prayer. In some of my darkest, disheartened times I’ve looped this song over and over wailing with the screaming guitar solo as it echos my heart ache in the times I’ve been abused.
In the Psalms these kinds of prayers are called trouble and trust and laments.
This is a lament I wrote for someone whose closest and dearest were their betrayer. Then in the writing and praying of it, I realized this was my lament and yours maybe too, though for other reasons. This psalm is not gentle smoke but burnt trust, a shout for God to hear, act, and bring healing justice.
May this prayer, storming the heavens be pleasing to you as well, God.
“Hear us, oh God,
As we voice our complaint*”
You have been silent in the midst of my wailing.
My suffering is hidden from you.
I throw wide my arms, yearning for your embrace.
I unlock my heart empty of your comfort.
I hear nary a whisper.
Feel not a brush of your Spirit.
You promise to be with me.
You have been a warm cloak
in days of frigid fear:
You’ve been sturdy shoes on treacherous ground.
“Hear us, oh God,
As we voice our complaint”
But today
I stand stripped, unshod
In a storm of enemy arrows.
Trusted ones have betrayed me;
Those whose hearts and hands should hold your comfort
Have instead injured and abused.
Their words carry no shadow of truth.
In worship, songs of praise remind me
of your goodness I no longer know.
Their notes darts of accusation,
Their poetry empty cocoons.
When I pray, my hopes sink to the floor
And lie limp.
No hand reaches to pick them up,
No ear gives them life.
Hear me, oh God,
Draw near,
“Hear us, oh God,
As we voice our complaint*”
As I voice my distress,
As I spell out my anguish.
I stand before you today
Naked and ashamed.
Cast me not away.
Clothe me in your love.
Hear me. Heal me.
Been there, done that
I hear you!
Yes, He walks with us always. But even the Psalmists recognized we don’t always feel/know that in this world. Thus lamentations! Some Protestant theologians call this the already/not yet. We are already redeemed but not yet experiencing the fulness of it in this world.
(I think that this comment might be meant for what I was writing below,… there was some kind of “issue” going on when I tried to post it ~ I think it’s because the browser in my favorite computer, is becoming noticeably “old and outdated” ~ kind of like me!,… lol!,…)
anyway ~ “knowing and experiencing God” surely is a process,… even comparing the glorious realities of the Old Testament, with what I consider to be further (and possibly even more intimate?) ways that we can “know and abide with God”, provided to us by the coming of Jesus, and our mutual reception of/with Him,…
I think that I just wanted to “blame satan” for all the trouble, deception, and hurt and pain that he causes around us,… there’s no doubt that his effects can be bewildering and confusing, as well as very distressing to anyone caught in his negative and sometimes treacherous ways,…
and then I wanted to say … “But, God!”,… God’s plan has always been to rescue us,… He loves us, and not only does He “know our pain”, but He “hears our cries”,… and “Greater is He who is in us, than he who is in the world”,…
1 John 4:4 “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.”
(-:
Thanks for the clarification and the further thoughts.
living “in the material world”, vulnerable to the challenging conditions that surround us, it is almost inevitable that we will encounter situations and events and even people, that may seem to hurt, resist or even abandon us,… having been “broken”, as this world is, by the effects of satan’s malevolent influence and will, vulnerable human beings begin to perceive its inherent “heartlessness”, when experienced “on its own chaotic terms”,… and since we are “created in the image of God”, this “world” can never fully satisfy us,… we long for honesty, fairness, goodness, faithfulness, love, eternity,… the more we taste and learn of God, we begin to know that there are better things available to us than many of “this world’s disappointments”,… even death is not the “end” that it appears to be,… “seeking first the Kingdom of God” brings us closer to the “Truth” that saves us, guides us, and often rescues us,…
satan is all too satisfied to leave us feeling abandoned and alone,… but with God, we are never alone,…
Jeremiah 33:3
“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”