Pour out your heart like water

There are three phrases in Lamentations 2, that are especially relevant right now:

The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord...
...let your tears flow like a river day and night...
...pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord...

Since the start of quarantine, I've been co-leading a weekly time of support and encouragement for families raising "children from hard places". While Zoom is not the most ideal location for the amount of support needed right now, it is something.

These verses from Lamentations were my words of encouragement to the group this past week. In the midst of amped-up behaviors by kids whose bodies already lived in constant fear and stress, with parents home and working and schooling and parenting and interceding, stressed themselves with limited possibilities for self-care and alone time, it's okay to not be okay. But where do we go when we're not okay?

We take it to the Lord. Lamentations teaches us how. We may not be the Israelite nation, exiled in Babylon, experiencing carnage, cannibalism, the slaying of children, and more. But we are exiled in our own way and time. As Eugene Peterson says in his introduction to Lamentations in The Message, "Lamentations is a concentrated and intense biblical witness to suffering. Suffering is a huge, unavoidable element in the human condition. To be human is to suffer. No one gets an exemption. it comes as no surprise then to find that our Holy Scriptures, immersed as they are in the human condition, provide extensive witness to suffering...Lamentations...provides the community of faith with a form and vocabulary for dealing with loss and pain."

It's okay to sit at Jesus' feet and cry out. It's okay to let your tears flow like a river day and night. It's okay to pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord.

Then sit and wait. He will hold you in His hands. He will cover you with His wings. He will bring comfort, healing, peace, grace, and truth that only He can.

"You redeem, You redeem,

You restore what's been stolen from me

You reclaim, You release

You rebuild with the words that you breathe

You redeem...

Miracles will happen

Healing will come

The plans of our enemy ruined undone...

Here in your presence lost in Your love...

Wrecked by Your presence I'm lost in Your love."

-You Redeem, Aaron Shust

Remember, we know the end of the story.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. 

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, 

for the old order of things has passed away.

Revelation 21:4