Giving Words to Our Lament Through Song
Giving Words to Our Lament Through Song
“By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.2 On the willows there we hung up our harps.3 For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 4How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” – Psalm 137:1-4 (NRSV)
This Psalm has been on my mind since last night. This morning, as I was writing in my journal, the line “how could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” has been echoing in my heart.
This time of intentional distancing from one another; of trying to be church to and with one another without the blessing and joy of gathering feels like a foreign land. It feels like exile.
The days are long, and even though I am able to speak with many of you on the phone, connect on social media, or send a quick email, it’s not the same as gathering together or joining hands for prayer in your homes.
I am grieving the loss of Sunday mornings together, of Church at Home, and coming to your homes to see you. I’m sad. Are you sad?
The hardest part of this for me is that normally when I’m sad, I have my community to share that sadness with me – because we all bring our humanity with us when we gather for worship or Church at Home.
We don’t wear it on our sleeves, necessarily; we don’t have to for we know that to be human is to suffer periodically. This time of exile, of a prolonged suffering, is hard. We will get through it.
It is also ok for us to grieve, to be sad and to feel the emotions that come with an overnight overturning of life as we know it.
Today, I invite us all to sing this song of lament together in this new and foreign land we are journeying through right now. Though we are physically distant from one another, we are joined together in heart.
Let us lament together, for in lament, hope is made ever more clear.
“When sorrow floods the troubled heart and clouds the mind with fears, affliction presses from the soul the bitter flow of tears. God’s weeping children raise the prayer “almighty God how long ‘til tears shall cease and silence break and grief be turned to song?”
Sara Robb-Scott is the Pastor for Senior Adults and Pastoral Care at First Baptist Decatur. You can follow her on Twitter or read more of her writings on her blog.