Lament is Worship

We had friends over for a worship night a few days ago. Friends called to different churches and living out different seasons, coming together to sing and pray and remind each other that we’re united not by a building but by our Good Shepherd. It was beautiful and soul filling and no one took any pictures cause we were too busy singing our butts off.

My favorite part (and the hardest part) of the night was a time of lament. We honestly shared our pain with each other and—I’ll be honest with you—it was heartbreaking. Immediately, my mind began scrambling, trying to think of words that would placate my friends. But instead, we just sat in that holy tension together… and then we took communion, letting the shed blood of Christ speak where our words always fall short.

2 Corinthians 1:6 says, “if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.” I love that, baked into the fabric of Christianity, is the freedom to be honest about our pain and to rely on each other in the midst of it. We are meant to grieve and be comforted together. To tell each other, “I’ve been there. You’re not alone.” These small, seemingly ineffective words invite in the sacred. We get to share in each other’s sufferings just as Christ shared in ours.

Isn’t that beautiful? The Lord never tells us to sugarcoat or intellectualize our pain, but invites us to feel it. And then He gives His people to us so we have a tactile representation of His presence. We get to be held on this earth, and it is but a shadow of the way we are held in the heavenly places.

All this to say, thank God for God. Thank God for His people. More worship nights forever and ever, plz & thank u.