Blessed Are Those Who Mourn: Why Lament Matters
This post is adapted from a message given during a service of lament on June 19th.
A service of lament held on June 19th.
We do this thing in America, I imagine many–if not all–of us have even done it a handful of times today. It’s this thing where we walk past another person, we give a little smile, perhaps a subtle nod and we say “Hi, how are you?” and then we keep walking. It’s disorienting because the language says “I care, I want to know you” but our behavior speaks otherwise. I’m certain we’ve all been on the receiving end of this as well—more often than not, we know we are not “good” (it’s at least not the most accurate descriptor), but out of fidelity to the social script, we say our line: “Good, how are you?” “Good!” “Good!” and we go on our merry way.
We perform. We outwardly proclaim with our words a message of contentment, balance, and even joy while inwardly we feel starkly different. The dissonance created by this mismatch of our outward speech and behavior with our inward thoughts and emotions can be disorienting and destabilizing. No matter how mild or intense this dissonance is, it has the effect of disenfranchising the heart and uprooting us from reality.
We don’t only do this kind of thing—this emotional performance, this bypassing of truth—with other people. We do it to the Lord…and we do it all the time. I don’t believe we do it out of insincerity but because somewhere along the way, many of us have accepted the quiet lie that we can’t be fully honest with God, that reverence means restraint, that real faith should always sound strong and composed. And over time, we start to relate to God more by what he does than by who he is. We thank him for provision, we ask him for help, we praise him for power—but we forget that first and foremost he is our Father who simply wants to be with us, to know us, and to hear the unpolished truth of our hearts.
The Lord never asks “How are you?” in a frenzied manner as if he’s rushing down the hall tossing the question over his shoulder. For him, the question “How are you?” is not a polite line on the social script; it is an invitation into the deepest places of our souls.
And what we often find in those deepest places of the soul—beneath the surface answers, behind the practiced lines—is oftentimes pain, confusion, loss, or longing that we’ve never fully named, that we’re sure how to name or that we’re not sure is allowed to be named. This is the realm of lament; it feels vulnerable, risky, and messy. But it is sacred ground–it’s where honesty becomes worship and sorrow becomes prayer.
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us why lament matters: “Life can be savagely marked by incoherence, a loss of balance, and unrelieved asymmetry.” When the church refuses to acknowledge that disorientation, our worship ceases to be faith-filled defiance and instead becomes “a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to acknowledge or experience the disorientation of life.” Bruggemann presses further:
“The use of these psalms of darkness may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith. It insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way, and it insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. Nothing is out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. Everything properly belongs in this conversation of the heart. To withhold parts of life from that conversation is in fact to withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God.”
That is blunt, and it is liberating. The reality is if you don’t mourn, you don’t need a Comforter; if you never acknowledge sorrow, you will never taste the blessing Jesus promised: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt 5:4).
Two common errors
Before we explore how lament works, we must name two mistakes Christians often make.
Wallowing perpetually without hope. We can mistake honest lament for a permanent posture of despair—an endless rehearsal of pain that drifts into self-pity. The psalmists, however, never camp there. They start in the pit, but they expect God to lift them. “Hope in God,” the writer tells his own soul in Psalm 42. Lament that never moves toward trust is not biblical lament; it is bondage.
Prematurely moving to resurrection. Far more common in our culture is the reflex to skip Good Friday and Holy Saturday and sprint straight to Easter. We quote Romans 8:28 before the tears are dry. We force “It is well” through clenched teeth. That haste is not faith; it is avoidance. Resurrection cannot be forced. It is God’s gift, given in his time, usually after we have lingered in the tomb long enough to know we cannot raise ourselves.
Lament steers us between those ditches. It keeps us from drowning in sorrow, and it keeps us from papering over sorrow with truisms and cliches.
The anatomy of lament: plea and praise
Most lament psalms follow two great movements.
1. Plea
Address. The prayer begins with “O God,” “My God,” “Lord.” This is covenant speech—intimate, direct.
Complaint. The psalmist lays out the crisis—sickness, betrayal, injustice, divine silence—often accusing God of passivity: “Why have you forgotten me?”
Petition. The language grows bold, even imperative: “Arise,” “Deliver,” “Save.” The sufferer claims covenant rights.
Motivation. “For your name’s sake,” “If I die, who will praise you?” Desperate people bargain shamelessly, and God lets the words stand.
Imprecation. Sometimes the prayer asks God to shatter the oppressor’s teeth. Israel never edited those lines; they trusted God enough to hand him their ugliest desires.
2. Praise
Then—suddenly or gradually—the poem turns. The tone shifts from accusation to adoration. Three elements usually appear:
Assurance of being heard. “You have heard the voice of my plea.” Once the psalmist knows God is listening, hope ignites.
Payment of vows. The singer keeps promises made in desperation—thank-offerings, testimony, obedience.
Doxology. “You turned my mourning into dancing.” The God who seemed absent is confessed as faithful.
Notice: the plea is not less faithful than the praise. Both belong in worship, and the journey from one to the other is essential. Resurrection follows death; praise follows lament. Skip the first, and the second becomes hollow at best, impossible at worst.
What belongs in lament? Everything.
Petitions for deliverance and healing, utterances of pain and sorrow, cries of dereliction, confessions of sin and injustice, pleas for intervention. Nothing is out of bounds, because nothing in human experience is outside the reach of God’s redeeming love. That is why Paul can call the Lord “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort others” (2 Cor 1:3-4). Comfort received becomes comfort shared; private sorrow becomes communal ministry.
Beloved, this has been an unsettling season that has affected each of us in different ways. The psalms don’t separate individual grievances from those of the community. The teardown of one life shakes the body of Christ; the healing of one member becomes the comfort of all. You do not need to justify your tears or hide them. You do not have to fix the problem or explain why it hurts. You are simply invited to tell the truth in the presence of God and his people. Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, will meet you there. He knows what it is to be abandoned, misunderstood, crucified. And he knows what it is to rise. He does not despise your weakness; he has walked that road. He will walk it again—this time with you.
As you engage this ancient practice of lament, remember the two errors: don’t wallow aimlessly, and don’t rush. Speak the truth, then let the community bear it with you before God. The psalmists teach us to trust that whatever begins in plea can—by grace—end in praise.
So, bring your lament. Bring your plea. Bring your praise if it has begun to dawn. And if it hasn’t, bring your silence, your sighs too deep for words. The Spirit intercedes where language fails.
Then, together, we will wait—neither wallowing in the dark nor forcing the dawn—until the Comforter does what only he can do. And when he does, we will pay our vows, lift our thanksgiving, and bear witness that the God who hears also saves.
