“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?” – Habakkuk 1:2-3
Have you ever had a time in your life when you’ve looked up at the heavens in a time of confusion or trouble and shouted out, “Hey, is anybody up there? Are you seeing all this?!”
This is exactly what the prophet Habakkuk is doing at the beginning of his compact but powerful prophecy. He’s watching righteous people suffer while unrighteous people prosper and can’t do the moral math. Habakkuk describes what’s happening for God as if God is not seeing it. In fact, he all but accuses God of that when he says, “How long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?”
We might read this and think, “Habakkuk, be careful, pal! You don’t wanna talk to God that way.” But that’s the thing. You can talk to God that way. Over and over again, Scripture shows us God’s closest people doing this. Job questioned God about the same exact thing as Habakkuk did. “Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty and why do those who know him never see his days?…From out of the city the dying groan, and the soul of the wounded cries for help; yet God charges no one with wrong.” (Job 24:1-3,12).
Jacob wrestled with God. Moses vented before God. Jeremiah too. We see David repeatedly do this in the psalms. He questions God’s care for him “Why God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (22:1). He tells God to wake up. “Awake and rouse yourself for my vindication!” (35:23). And even to buzz off and leave him alone. “Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more.” (39:13). That’s cheeky!
We’ve coined a special word for these types of psalms – laments. It’s estimated that as many as a third of the psalms are laments, which shows that lamenting is actually a type of worship. Sri Lankan pastor Ajith Fernando in his book Joyful Perseverance, knows from bitter experience the many frustrations that come with Christian service. He writes: “We proactively seek to win the lost, but few are saved. Some walk away from the faith…People we trust betray us. Colleagues turn against us. People whom we help sacrificially turn against us when we do one thing that they don’t like… An outreach event we worked hard on falls flat because of unexpected rain storm. A fruitful year of ministry is ruined by a cancer diagnosis.”
Lamenting is groaning before God about such things. It’s a prayer where we work through our struggles and confusion in an attempt to find understanding or peace. But it’s groaning, not grumbling, Ajith says. “Groaning is the cry of obedient people who are suffering despite their faithfulness. Grumbling is the complaint of those who don’t want to be obedient or submit to God’s will.”
The difference is we do this hard work of the soul in the presence of God, which converts it into worship. “Expressing our sorrow and weeping can help us dispel bitterness over what has happened to us, if the weeping is done in the presence of God…Tears mixed with faith open us to express our pain to God in lament, which in turn begins a process whereby faith brings the assurance of God’s sovereignty over our situation.”