God responds to our laments

In a previous blog, I wrote about the gift of God's silence. God gives us the space to lament and be angry with him, for as long as we need. He doesn't interrupt us with cliche phrases of how he has a plan or how it's all going to be okay. But he is not unresponsive. God cannot NOT be moved by our laments.

Rebekah Ann Eklund in Practicing Lament, explains that in Jewish tradition, Isaiah is read as God's response to the book of Lamentations. She writes:

At the end of Lamentations, the narrator speaks in the collective voice of all Israel, asking God, "Why do you forget us forever?" (Lam 5:20). God quotes this line back to Israel in Isaiah 49: "Zion said, 'The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.'" God goes on to insist that this is impossible: "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has born? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!'''*

The Bible has a whole book dedicated to uninterrupted lament, where God is seemingly silent. But God does respond. He doesn't speak too soon, but he also doesn't leave us wondering if he's listening.

As the one-year anniversary of Julia's death approaches in a couple of weeks, I have been starting to ask myself: How have I seen God responding to my laments?

I wrote in my journal a month ago "God, I hate that Mike suffers so much, and that I have not much to give him." Immediately after writing that, Mike was invited to a men's group where they share what's going on in their lives each week. I see that as one very direct response from God to our lament.

I imagine I may not be able to see God's full response to me for many years. I still need the space to live in the silence and the lament. But I do know that he will respond. He can't not respond. He can't forget his baby.

* Rebekah Ann Eklund, Practicing Lament. (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021), 13.