Just stop and look and really see

Remember, Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.

We have lost everything. Everything we have worked for. Our homes. Our land. Our inheritance. It’s all gone.

Remember, Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.

We have lost those we have love the most.

Remember, Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.

Everything we took for granted, the everyday essentials, have all been stripped away.

Remember, Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.

Our enemies are right behind us all of the time, looking for ways to hurt us. We’re tired of running.

Remember, Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.

Our ancestors are all gone. We’ve lost our freedom and our identity.

Remember, Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.

We’re starving, violated, humiliated, tortured, exploited.

Remember, Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.

We’ve been robbed of our joy. How can we ever sing and dance again?

Everything has changed. Our strength is failing. We don’t know how to carry on.

Remember, Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.     My paraphrase of Lamentations 5:1-18

In the final poem of Lamentations, the poet repeats and recaps the suffering of the people of Jerusalem. It’s all been there in the previous poems, but the poet feels the need to reiterate exactly what has happened and how it feels.

He doesn’t want anyone to forget. He doesn’t want God to forget.

A while back, a member of our house group died suddenly. A guy in his forties. A lovely, lovely man. A family man. We were devastated. Of course, we were. It was a horrific shock and we’d lost someone we loved. About two weeks later – and I mean about only two weeks later – another member of the church who had not known him so well was heard to say ‘Are they still talking about that? I would have thought they’d be over that by now!’

Really? How can we ever possibly put a time limit on how long we are allowed to grieve for?

We may find a way to get on with life – and maybe that can take a long, long while to achieve in itself – but we will never forget our loss. Nothing will ever be the same again.

When someone dies, we get a lot of attention and concern in the short term. We’re inundated with flowers and cards and offers of help and cakes in those first few weeks. But then everyone gets on with their own lives. Everything carries on as normal. They forget.

And sometimes all we want to do is scream at them  ‘Just look! Remember what I am going through! It still hurts, you know. My heart is still in pieces. Everything has changed. Open your eyes and look at me. Really look at me.’

We want the people who care about us to take a moment and stop and really be fully present in our situation with us. To sit beside us and hold our hand and let us explain again (as often as we need to) what our pain looks like and feels like.

Not to fix anything. Not to bring advice and solutions. Not to minimise it by saying they know exactly how we feel and they’ve been through the same – or much worse! Not to say anything basically. Just to be there. To look. To remember. To connect.

The people in this poem feel isolated. Cut off from God. They need Him to remember and look and see. They need to know He is there with them in their suffering. Of course He’s there, He’s always there. But they need to spell it all out again and call on Him to stop and look and listen. They need to feel that He is there in their bones. And that’s OK. They can do that as often as they need to.

And this language of pain can be our language of pain too. We can call on God and on others to stop and look and listen to what we are going through. And when we have their attention, their full attention, we can try to articulate what we are feeling. We can try to find the words to explain why we’re acting the way we are. We can deal with our fear of rejection and being misunderstood and voice our pain.

Everyone needs compassion.