“You have…”
Over the past two weeks, we’ve read personal essays that contemplate the limitations of our humanity as we learn to walk through sorrow and pain in community. How do we move from making sense to finding peace in God’s sovereign ways when conflict and wounds arise?
Now it’s your turn to notice what God might have been – or is currently – doing in your season of dependence and disorientation. Every other Thursday during “Out in the Open”, we’ll pause from our typical testimonies and invite you to write out your own lament that mirrors the language of the Psalms we’ve been reading and focusing on.
This week, we looked at Psalm 60. If you haven’t already, start by reading Dalton Deffenbaugh’s piece, When Making Sense Doesn’t Make Sense. In the first 3 verses, David (the author of this psalm) has a recurring theme: “You have…” – meaning that while there were obviously minor characters at work causing challenges in his life, the hard things could ultimately be traced back to God. When it comes to the “hard” you’ve witnessed, what are four things you’re honestly willing to attribute to God (as David did)? Maybe there were human elements involved, but from your perspective, did it feel like God was the main character behind the scenes?1
Use the above to write the first 3 verses in your own words:
O God, you have _______________.
You have _________________.
You have _______________.
You have ________________.
You have made your people see ______________________.
You have given us ____________________________.
An example by Jessika Zander has been provided below. If you’d like to contribute your own lament inspired by this passage, we’d be happy to receive it at [email protected].
O God,
you have blurred our vision
cut our hearts with precision.
You have chosen suffering, death, and pain,
hardship and grief pouring down like rain.
You have darkened the light,
taken away what we love.
Come help us see clearly, what is above.
You have made your people see hard things,
leave us helpless and hurt,
you’ve even broken our wings.
You have given us bitterness to taste.
Why, O God, are you still hiding your face?
Come through Lord, come through,
and deliver your heirs.
Let us be faced with the God who honestly cares.
You are the mighty, the ruler, the king,
redeemer and savior to whom our hearts sing.
Crush down the evil and lead us your way.
remind us profoundly that we are just clay.
Oh, grant us help against the foe.
It is you who reigns over high and low.
- Prompt excerpt taken from The Everyday Psalmist (WaterBrook, 2023), p. 102. ↩︎
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