Embracing Lament CCDA Style

At the beginning of October, I had the privilege of attending the annual national CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) conference with two classmates, Joe Mason III and Anna Deibert, along with Chaplain Kelly Figueroa-Ray. CCDA is an organization committed to creating community focused on biblical justice, equity, and multicultural harmony. Over the course of this conference, we heard many speakers who all emphasized the importance of loving our neighbors, as love is the greatest commandment and even supersedes the biblical law. Love comes first. There were also other sessions on the death penalty, multicultural christianity, inclusion of those with disabilities in the church, and what prospering really means. All of these topics, and the speakers gave us good things to think about in our faith. There was also praise and worship every day and night, led by Kingdom United, a worship group from the Chicago area. They blessed us with gospel style music, helping us give the praise deserved to our God. The CCDA conference was a great experience, and one I am grateful to the Wesley Center for providing, but one speaker in particular stuck with me as I left, and that it was I would like to share. 

“To cry is human, to lament is Christian” said Dr. Alvin Sanders at the annual CCDA conference, this year held in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. Sanders works for World Impact, an organization that does urban ministry through redemptive poverty work. Dr. Sanders had the task of talking about embracing truth, specifically from Psalm 85. Psalms is a book of the Bible filled with songs written by King David. This particular Psalm is a lament. A lament is a song of grief or sorrow. Dr. Sanders made the point that lament occurs when we are in a losing season and when nothing seems to be going right for us. In these times, we can cry because that is human nature, but a Christian response is lamenting. What lamenting means, Sanders said, is to praise God even when we are losing. In a losing season, lamenting is running towards God even more than we already were. As Christians, our life is not always going to involve winning, or being in the best circumstances. Actually, doing the work of Christ is probably going to involve more losing seasons, than winning ones. But part of following God means that even when our world is falling apart, we still give Him praise for what He has done, and for what we know He is going to do. The second part of lament is giving God our bold requests. Often times, it feels wrong to argue with God, or anything of nature because He is so much bigger than us. Dr. Sanders says that asking boldly of God is part of lament because we long so much to be in a winning season. The way I see it, the real test of faith in any religion is in the losing seasons. It is easy to praise God when everything is going right, but that is much more difficult when things are going wrong. Our love for God should come out in our praise even in the struggles, and our longing for Christ’s kingdom here on earth should be out bold requests of God, because we as Christians know that God do more than we can even ask or imagine.