Renewal Church

Many people say that God is good. But there are those whose suffering makes God feel more like an enemy than a friend. If you feel that way, you aren't the first. The people of Lamentations said the same thing long ago: "The Lord has become like an enemy" (Lamentations 2:5).

Lamentations contains the prayers, the cries, the anguish, the confusion, and the rage of a people (God's people) who feel abandoned by Him. This is a book about a people who are fighting to hold on to their faith, fighting to believe that God really is good.

This Sunday, we enter into their story and try to make sense of all the pain in our world. If you are broken-hearted, this weekend may be for you. If you feel forgotten by God, we encourage you to join us. Together, we will see that God is faithful, that God can be trusted with our lives, and that God really is good.

Many people say that God is good. But there are those whose suffering makes God feel more like an enemy than a friend. If you feel that way, you aren't the first. The people of Lamentations said the same thing long ago: "The Lord has become like an enemy" (Lamentations 2:5).

Lamentations contains the prayers, the cries, the anguish, the confusion, and the rage of a people (God's people) who feel abandoned by Him. This is a book about a people who are fighting to hold on to their faith, fighting to believe that God really is good.

You’re walking down Beale Street with your family and before you realize it, you’re mere feet from a homeless person slouching against the wall of a shop. He holds out his hand for some spare change and your eyes immediately dart away from him — like a reflex. A female beggar stands in an intersection holding a sign, “Homeless. Not an addict. Anything will help.” Your car is right beside her. Your knuckles tighten on your steering wheel and you feel the heat building in your face as you awkwardly try to avoid making eye contact, praying the light will turn green.

Many of us have had these experiences. They are disturbing and can even be frightening. When strangers enter our space with their brokenness, it feels unsettling. We’re not prepared for the weight of that moment. But here we are, living in a world that is full of pain. So will we engage or will be retreat?

The Poet of Lamentations leads us to this same uncomfortable place. He calls us to look upon the desolation of Lady Zion, Jerusalem. He draws our attention to her brokenness and her pain. Babylon has brutalized her. The few remaining inhabitants who escaped the exile and the sword weep over her. No, she is not innocent in this story (who is?). But she is still loved by God nonetheless. And the Poet calls us to lament over her, too, over our world — the same way Jesus lamented over her hundreds of years later: “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it” (Luke 19:41).

Just this week, a number of high school children lost their lives or were injured in a senseless mass shooting. The families and friends of these children are coping with immeasurable pain today — pain that will leave them forever changed. Quick and easy answers won’t satisfy their angst or their grief. Such triteness would only be insulting to the gravity of their pain.

It may be Providential that we begin a new series this Sunday on the Book of Lamentations as we wrestle with our own feelings and responses to the evil and suffering that is present in our world.

The Book of Lamentations doesn’t ignore this suffering. It doesn’t attempt to satisfy sufferers with user-friendly and over-simplified answers. Lamentations was written by a heartbroken poet who gathered the brutal stories of his community which had suffered unspeakable tragedy and he arranged these cries of anguish — these laments — into a book that, for millennia, has helped God’s followers feel, cope with, and express their grief.

The rage, grief, and even doubt voiced in Lamentations encourages us to be honest with God — that God isn’t afraid of our feelings. But it also calls us to humility by recognizing we are not in control, that God is sometimes maddeningly confusing, and that life can be tragic. Lamentations not only invites us to wrestle with questions and mystery and doubt, it gives us a vocabulary to express all this.

Yet, if we look closely, we will see that God is gently and quietly extending his hand of help to us. And if we humble ourselves, we will see that He is faithful. Forever faithful.

Symbols help us to communicate ideas, thoughts, feelings, and other facets of reality. Symbols embody realities otherwise difficult to convey. Symbols are essential for human dialogue and essential for human BEING since we ourselves are symbols of the ultimate reality, which is God (Genesis 1:28). The BIG stories of our world can be told concisely through symbols.

Jesus has invited us into cooperating with him in telling the BIG story of our deliverance from the Kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light through the powerful symbol of baptism.

We have a dream. A diverse church made up of people who share a common trust in Jesus. A church in which we all fight for humility and gentleness as hard as we fight for truth. A church growing in maturity – realizing our identity as the body of Jesus. Come dream with us.

We have a dream. A diverse church made up of people who share a common trust in Jesus. A church in which we all fight for humility and gentleness as hard as we fight for truth. A church growing in maturity – realizing our identity as the body of Jesus.