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Invitation to Lament & Gratitude

A few weeks ago, I wrote a news post on an Invitation to Gratitude. This week I feel the urge to nuance that. While I still encourage a practice of a gratitude journal during Lent, I now encourage you to add a practice of lament. This is not a case of either/or. It is both/and. If we only express gratitude we can push away, deny, and spiritually bypass the grief we are experiencing. And boy, it doesn’t take much effort to find reasons to grieve. War stretches on in places that once felt far away and now feel heartbreakingly close, especially for beloved members of our community. Political rhetoric grows sharper and more divisive. The earth groans under fires, floods, and storms. Many carry private sorrows as well: illness, loss, strained relationships, anxiety about the future. We do not have to manufacture lament. It rises naturally to our lips.

Scripture gives us permission to let it rise. The prophet Book of Jeremiah dares to say, “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.” And astonishingly, God answers not with scolding, but with shared sorrow: “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt.” In Psalm 79 the community cries, “How long, O Lord?” Lament is not a failure of faith. It is faith telling the truth. It is love refusing to look away from suffering.

Lent is a season spacious enough to hold that truth. We often think of Lent as a time to give something up. This year, perhaps we might practice a both/and faith. Both lament and gratitude. Both naming what is broken and noticing what is beautiful. Both crying out “How long?” and whispering “Thank you.”

Gratitude is not denial. It is defiance. Through the prophet Book of Isaiah God speaks into a devastated landscape: “Be glad and rejoice forever.” That is not naïveté. It is trust in a Creator who makes newness out of rubble. To rejoice forever is to keep finding reasons for gratitude even in grief, to keep trusting that God’s creative energy is still at work in the ruins. That is resurrection-shaped joy.

So here is an amended Lenten invitation.

Keep a simple gratitude journal. Each day, or as often as you can, take a photo of something that catches the light — the way afternoon sun rests on a table, the silhouette of a tree against the sky. Or write one sentence about a kindness received, a moment of quiet, a breath of beauty. And at the same time, do not silence your lament. Pray it. Write it in your own personal psalm of lament. Bring it to worship. Let the tears come when they need to come. Our God is not distant from anguish. In Christ, God has entered it. By the Spirit, God groans within us still.

Lent leads us toward the cross, but it also leads us toward an empty tomb. The path is not either/or. It is both/and. We grieve what is broken in our world, and we practice seeing where grace is already stirring. We name injustice, and we look for signs of renewal. We tell the truth about suffering, and we refuse to surrender hope.

In these dark and troubled times, this may be one of the most faithful things we can do: lament honestly, give thanks intentionally, and trust that even now the Holy One is at work, quietly, creatively, lovingly, in the ruins.

Yours in Christ,

Lynn