It seems an appropriate time to share this journal entry I wrote last June in my journal. I hope you’ll feel invited to lament with complete honesty to God.
June 5, 2019
With unhinged tongue and many, many tears, last night I told God he seems so cruel to make us suffer so much in life. His love for us seems so incompatible with the futility we suffer—the insecurity of every single good gift. It makes every good gift seem hollow because one-by-one, or perhaps all at once, at any moment, they are taken away from us, or us from them. “A good father doesn’t give a good gift just to take it back. Does it please you to see us suffer like this?”
These were the kind of words I spoke to him while gasping for breath. My body felt shot with my anxiety and grief. I could not sleep until it was all said. “Why, God? Why do you do this?” I blew my nose and finally lay my head down.
As I began to doze off, a thought circled and circled in my heart: “Job spoke to God like this, and it got him front row seats to see God’s glory. Would you rather pray like this and get front row seats like Job? Or would you rather keep your mouth shut so you won’t ever have a reason to repent?”
I’m inclined to learn honest lament in exchange for my sanctimonious, sterilized addresses to the God who already knows how upset I am. The latter is speech for a capricious king. The former is the intimacy of a child with her Papa.
