The Gift of Lament: Embracing Vulnerability and Honesty with God
By Rev. Philip Allred
We all love the moments in life when things are going well—when faith feels easy and everything makes sense. But let’s be honest, there are also those seasons when nothing makes sense, when the floor falls out from under you, and you’re left wondering where God is in the mess. That’s where lament comes in.
Lament is this honest, vulnerable space where we can come before God and say, “This hurts. I don’t understand. I’m scared.” It’s all over Scripture—from the cries of the Psalms to the groans of the prophets to Jesus Himself crying out on the cross. It reminds us that God can handle our rawest prayers.
When the pandemic hit, our family found ourselves in one of those seasons. The consulting business we’d built from the ground up collapsed overnight when churches shut their doors. We had no clue how we were going to pay the bills. It felt like the world we had built was slipping through our fingers, and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
In that season, all we could do was cry out to God. I remember walking for hours, pouring out every fear, every doubt, every frustration. I told God, “I don’t know where this is going. I’m scared. I’m angry. I don’t even know what to pray right now.” But in those moments, something holy happened. I wasn’t given all the answers, but I did sense God’s presence walking alongside us in the unknown.
That’s the thing about lament—it’s not a quick fix or a tidy prayer that wraps everything up with a bow. It’s the long, honest work of trusting God with your pain, even when you don’t have a clue where the path leads. And in that vulnerability, we often find a strength we didn’t know we had.
Lament isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It’s faith that’s been through the fire. It’s a way of saying, “God, I’m showing up with everything I’ve got, even if what I’ve got today is just tears.”
Psalm 13 captures this so well. The psalmist cries out:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
It’s as if the psalmist is giving us permission to ask the hard questions. But even in the same breath, they choose to lean into trust:
But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
That’s the gift of lament—it lets us hold both. The pain and the trust. The questions and the hope. The tears and the stubborn belief that somehow, even here, God is with us.