This Present Absence

In the Psalms, we have prayers and songs offered up to God that shatter our conceptions of what communication with the Divine should look like. Known as psalms of lament, they rage against God, questioning his care and his love.

Lament, complaint, tears are all worship when offered to God, and we need to grasp this very real heritage as an essential part of our faith. Sometimes, faith is a refusal to release the God who demands that you do just that (Gen 32:26). To lose our tears, to lose lament in the name of faith is to follow a God that refuses us in the midst of our heartache.

My professor recently asked those of us in his class to compose our own psalms of lament. At first, I was hesitant to do so -- a sort of holy darkness has taken up residence within me, and some days, my heart is simply too broken to share with others, much less God.

I wrote one nonetheless. And I thought I would offer it to God in the midst of your company. Because I need my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Great God of Absence, hear my sorrow.
Words fail my heart just as you have,
Still my lips dare to give voice to the anguish of my soul.
I will shout to the nothingness of your presence.

You have left me, forsaken me
In accordance with a promise you could not keep:
You who are the great Immanuel
Are anything but -- you are not with me.

But still I search for you.
Because I cannot escape the iron-cold grip,
The terrible beauty
That men call your Love.