Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 179:716 (Oct 2022)
Article: Lament: The Path Through Suffering
Author: M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall

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Lament: The Path Through Suffering

M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall

M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall is Professor of Psychology at Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, La Mirada, California.

* This is the fourth article in the four-part series “Suffering and the Christian Life: The Hard Road to Glory,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2–5, 2021.

Shortly after my diagnosis with breast cancer at age forty-five, my neighbor Stephanie came over to see how I was doing. My family had moved into a house across the street from Stephanie’s family when both our oldest sons were babies. Over the years, we’ve shared resources, watched our children growing up together, and enjoyed catching up in our front yards. Stephanie is a devout Greek Orthodox Christian, and after I had caught her up on my cancer news, she asked if she could pray for me. In her prayer she asked God to make my suffering a beautiful offering to him. The imagery stuck with me. It’s not one that I had heard in my evangelical world, suggesting as it did that suffering could somehow be connected to worship. That image of suffering as an offering to God stayed with me throughout my cancer journey and shaped my response to my suffering.

As I’ve done more work in this area, I’ve discovered that the connection between suffering and worship is a deeply biblical one. When Job learned of the worst catastrophe of all, the loss of all his children, we are told that he “fell to the ground in worship, and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised’ ” (Job 1:20).1 One thing that should be clear from Job’s story is that the connection between suffering and worship is not an easy or a quick one. The story of Job contains many,

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many chapters of lament, of wrestling with God. Today I will be talking about the road from suffering to worship, a road that is clearly marked in Scripture and that is modelled for us by Jesus—the road of lament.

Lament is making a slow comeback in conservative Christian circles. Just a few years ago, when Todd Billings’s excellent book on the subject fell into my hands, I had never heard of lament.2 Now more sustained theological work is being done on lament, and a few churches have even started introducing lament into their services. But there is still much work to be done to make lament part o...