A Sacred Sorrow Experience Guide: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament

WEEK ONE

VOCABULARY AND CONCEPTS

INTRODUCTION

Before you, a narrow pathway extends into a dark terrain. Perhaps you have crossed it at various times in your life, maybe even traveled for a season within its boundaries. The path is lament, and this study will help you explore its length more deliberately.

The Bible promises that the path is going somewhere. Though it frequently passes through the valley of the shadow of death, that is not its final end.

First, there are a few milestones, signposts, with which we must become familiar. Our first week will be spent learning to read them and follow their direction along the way. But more than direction, they will give a sense of shape and meaning to what can sometimes appear to be a senseless and confusing journey. Perhaps you might even consider them lampposts like the one on the border of Narnia, marking the boundary between one land and another completely different one.

Once the trek begins, we will be joined by other, infinitely more experienced travelers. We will meet the first—Job—and walk with him for a time. We will follow in his footsteps in order to gain our direction and learn the proper pace. Without his help in the beginning of the trip, we would most likely lose our way.

Next, we will take up with David. Having begun to get accustomed to the landscape, our time with him will provide us with priceless and hard-fought knowledge of how to deal with all the various terrain. The road may turn sharply uphill or might skirt a precipice. The landscape will, no doubt, be dark. David will enable us to follow the path no matter how steep, rocky, or threatening.

Just as we part company with David, Jeremiah will join us. He will teach us how to follow the course with a crowd, as well as when we are utterly alone. He, perhaps as no one we’ve met thus far, has fallen more often along this path of lament. His knees are more bruised and bloody. He will understand if we long to turn back and look for home. He will remind us that our final home lies at the other end of the trail, in the direction we are already heading. Most importantly, Jeremiah will prepare us, will teach us to recognize the most important Guide we will encounter along the path of lament.

Finally, at what seems the far end of the trail, we will encounter Jesus. We will find Him waiting for us. In His company we will discover that what we thought was the end is, in fact, the beginning. What felt like the last of our strength has become the first. The trail will become no less rough or steep with Him, yet we will find it a different