Learning to Lament: A Guide to Praying in Our Hardest Moments

“God, I pray Mitch never feels sad about his sister again.”

My eyes flew open. I didn’t hear another word that was prayed.

Instantly, my friend’s words grated against me.

Just a moment earlier, I’d asked for prayer—not long after the sudden death of my sister, aged just 13.

But this wasn’t what I meant. I was heartbroken—but that was okay, wasn’t it?

I was heartbroken—but that was okay, wasn’t it?

Honestly, I was no longer sure. Perhaps my pain was meant to dissipate in the presence of prayer, but it certainly seemed to be lingering as strong as ever.

This experience pushed me down a path of earnestly seeking to understand how to pray in hard times. How am I meant to pray faithfully, I wondered, when hardship feels thick and when hope seems desperately thin?

This is a question that afflicts each of us. The doctor confirms your fears: the cancer has returned. Or your hope is crushed by the news of a miscarriage. For some of us, it’s rising to a new day only to be met by the dark and familiar clouds of depression. You mourn the disclosure from a friend that they’ve been abused. Or perhaps it’s arriving home to tell your family that you’ve lost your job: hopes dim, and anxiety rises. Maybe it’s the toll of wars beginning, flood waters raging and constant destruction that fills your newsfeed.

In moments like these, how would God have us pray?

Learning to Lament

You may be as surprised as I was to learn that God has given us a model of prayer for these exact situations—the ones that hurt the most. In fact, this kind of prayer saturates large portions of the Scriptures. It’s more than forty per cent of Psalms; the central theme of the book of Lamentations; and is modelled for us by Jesus when he cries out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” 

This form of prayer is called lament: the honest expression of our sorrows to God. And tragically, lament has been lost from the vocabulary of many followers of Jesus today.

Lament has been lost from the vocabulary of many followers of Jesus today.

It was absent from my prayer life, and the lives of most Christians I knew. But lament has long been the practice of the people of God when they’re at the end of themselves. It’s also how God himself grieved the injustices of this world when he walked among us in the person of Jesus.

Lament, then, is a practice that we must recover—and one that I’d like to introduce you to by briefly exploring four common movements that we find in many psalms of lament. While lament psalms resist being rigidly defined by these four movements, my hope is to trace their common contours through Psalm 13, 22 and 88. In doing so, I pray you’ll be able to learn to lament for yourself by modelling your prayers on God’s word.

1. Turn to God

The first feature of lament is an address to God. The direction of the prayer matters here; it’s not grumbling to others—it’s intentionally coming before God in prayer. Anyone can cry, grumble and complain—but only the righteous offer their cries, grumbles and complaints as prayers to the Living God. The difference between the two is the direction. Notice how this is expressed in the opening verses of these three psalms;

“How long, LORD?” (Psalm 13:1)

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1)

“LORD, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.” (Psalm 88:1)

Psalm 13 and 22 begin by bringing a question before God, Psalm 88 with an acknowledgement of the salvation God offers. But did you catch the common thread?

They all turn to God first.

2. Cry Out Your Complaint

After turning to God, each of these psalms cries out with a complaint—a defining characteristic of lament. This involves naming the problem being seen or experienced and expressing it vividly before God. That might sound untrusting, perhaps even ungodly. But this is far from unbelief or ungodliness—this is a righteous response to the wrongfulness of life’s circumstances. It’s a refusal to wish away suffering, stiffen our upper lip or “be strong” in the face of sin and suffering.

We see this in Psalm 13 when David cries out to God when he seems absent in his life: 

How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? (Psalm 13:1-2).

Again, David feels distance from God in Psalm 22 and questions why he is forsaken (Ps 22:1-2)—words which Jesus himself takes up as his own on the cross (Mt 27:46). In Psalm 88, the paslmist expresses a sense of grief that is evidently unbearable:

You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths … my eyes are dim with grief. (Ps 88:6-9).

Crying out our complaints with heart-wrenching honesty is not only okay—but godly.

Psalms of lament show us that crying out our complaints with heart-wrenching honesty is not only okay—but godly. Even in the depths of the pit, the loss of a loved one, or a moment of despair—God anticipates and hears each of our cries.

3. Appeal for God to Hear and Respond

Laments don’t end with complaints. Their third movement is an appeal for God to hear and respond. 

The grounds for this appeal is God’s word; his character and his promises. Even in the darkness of Psalm 88, the psalmist appeals to a God who hears—“May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry” (Ps 88:2). 

David similarly appeals to God: “Look on me and answer, Lord my God” (Ps 13:3). As we lament, we not only express our difficulties to God, but we call upon him to hear us in our moment of need—knowing that he alone is our source of comfort, hope and help.

As people living after Jesus’ death and resurrection, our prayers of lament are now anchored in what we believe and know to be true about the character and promises of God revealed in Christ. We can know of God’s faithfulness to save us and meet us in the depths of our cries even more than the psalmists.

4. Confess Your Trust

Finally, a confession of trust in God acknowledges that, even if the answer to our prayer is unknown, God is trustworthy, whatever the circumstances. I say ‘often’ because of the three lament psalms, only two make it this far. David declares, “I will declare your name to my people” (Ps 22:22) and “I trust in your unfailing love” (Ps 13:5) as he brings his psalms to a close, even when an immediate resolution is not found. And yet Psalm 88 doesn’t conclude this way. While the psalmist cannot bring himself to declare praise as the climax of his song, he has already acknowledged “the God who saves” (v1).

As I look back, a prayer that took its lead from lament was what I craved as I grieved my sister’s death. I needed a form of prayer that would help me turn to God, honestly name my suffering while appealing for God to hear and respond with comfort and help, and counsel me to confess my trust in God too. And perhaps you do as well.

May the psalms of lament be a guide for your prayers in the difficult moments you face.