How long to sing this song?

How long?

If you’ve been to a U2 concert, it likely ended with the whole stadium singing this refrain. What an experience to join with thousands of souls, lifting up a mysterious question that holds a billion different meanings. Keep this in your imagination, or play it in the background, as you read on.

How long, O Lord? 

This phrase pulled me out of bed today, this August 24, 2021. I’m compelled to make note of the date because it seems like every day this month, this year, this life something heartbreaking interrupts my breath. Another flood, another war, another death, another diagnosis, another injustice, another loss, another chaos, another Covid uncertainty, another hard thing. Anyone with ears can hear the world groaning louder each day. Oh, mercy. Oh, justice. Oh, light, where are you? All creation groans under the weight of living. 

What do we do with all this longing and grieving and waiting and aching?

The genre of Psalm 40’s “new song” is praise, I’ve always been taught. I will sing a new song because you have rescued me from the muck – You’re wonderful God! How long do we get to sing a song of praise? How much longer until we get to meet you? How long might we enjoy your goodness?

But I wonder if David wrote it before the rescue, if he meant for it to be a clarion of future hope as much as a groaning of present suffering. I wonder how many of his psalms are actually new songs of lament?

How much longer until you show up in the middle of this mess, God? How long do I have to sing for you to notice my troubles? How I long for justice, how I long for peace, how I long for unconditional love. How long until we see your goodness in the land of the living? How long until my heart is healed? How long until this injustice is made right? How long do I have to put up with this illness? How long until this unbearably hot summer breaks?

Perhaps this sounds like whining or complaining. And perhaps sometimes it is. But if a heart is hurting, it’s important to express that pain. I’m certain I’m not the only one carrying so much loss right now. We’ve got to do something with it. Grief unexpressed leaks out in terrible ways. Our bodies, families and co-workers will pay the price for our pent-up pain.

I’ve been saying this lately – I’ve got to get this out of my body. Breathing helps. Yoga helps. Counseling helps. Gratitude helps. Worship helps too, but not the kind of worship that ends with shouts of victory and joy. There is a time to celebrate, and a time to grieve. Can we please make space for the latter in our worship? Where is a worship service that does so? I’m having a hard time finding one. 

It seems to me this is a time for new songs of corporate lament. New songs of the not yet. Songs of longing and loss that don’t end with a forced joy, but instead leave space for the reality that things are hard right now. We just need to let it out together: life is difficult. God don’t leave us alone in the difficulty. Be our help, be our rescue, hear our cry. Amen.

I stated earlier that most churches don’t make enough space for lament. The truth is, white churches don’t. But the black church could give a master class on corporate groaning with hope. The American negro community faced untold injustice and pain. This story is not mine, but I am leaning into it right now, humbled to glean a lesson from their immense difficulties. (Jamar Tisby, Barbara Holmes and Aaron Neiquist recorded a rich two-part conversation about all this here.)

The Negro spirituals born of their suffering, carried from Africa in the bowels of slave ships, composed in the fields and in the night – these are powerful songs of corporate lament.

I hope to learn from the most resilient people group among us. In these difficult times, let’s sing old and new songs of lament. Let’s let out our groaning, grief, anger, questions, whatever we’re holding in. Ask the question that has no answer: how long? Let the asking be your catharsis, expressing fully what you’ve been trying to deny or whitewash with praise songs. Let the asking open your heart to the comfort you need and open your hands to let go of trying to fix it. Sing your lament trusting that the melody is meeting God’s listening ears, and you are not alone.

How long… to sing this song?

The ache, the hope, the deep loss, the unanswerable questions; the longing, the darkness, the light. This too is worship. Who will sing with me?