A handful of women from OGC got to travel to Indianapolis to The Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference this summer. It was a gathering of almost 9,000 women in person, and numerous more online who cleared their schedules and gathered to learn, connect, and worship.
It is a powerful thing to sit in a room of women who love Jesus, learn from teachers who have studied for decades, and sing together about the goodness of the Lord. Despite tornado sirens, sleeplessness, and travel delays, we still left feeling filled. I enjoyed the team building time, seeing friends from previous conferences, learning about ministries and what they are up to around the world, and, of course, an epic bookstore! In fact, the bookstore was so central to the set up of the conference that one server we talked to thought that the conference was for librarians, “lots of women, lots of books… I figured that’s what it was!” However, one TSA agent we interacted with on the way home accurately corrected his man’s misunderstanding saying, “This wasn’t a conference about books. It was about one book. The best book ever written!” Suffice it to say, that was the first time I had ever wanted to linger in security longer to chat!
This year we studied seven Psalms in the plenary sessions to learn to turn our eyes and see the savior in the Psalms. John Calvin called the Psalms “an anatomy of all parts of the soul” meaning that all the feelings we experience– the highest highs and the lowest lows — in our humanity are somewhere represented in the psalter. I haven’t done the research, but I imagine the whole Feelings Wheel is represented somewhere in these 150 chapters! My favorite session discussed Psalm 102, a psalm of lament, and reminded us that God can handle the full spectrum of our emotions because he created us to have them. Lament is also a unique word because it means not just the grief of loss, but also hope that this is not the way it’s supposed to be. The psalm begins:
Hear my prayer, Lord;
let my cry for help come to you.
2 Do not hide your face from me
when I am in distress.
Turn your ear to me;
when I call, answer me quickly. (Psalm 102:1-2)
There are times in our lives when the pain feels urgent, overwhelming, and perplexing. There is a tension when we do not understand the circumstances we find ourselves in, and yet can still believe God to be good and good to us. The speaker shared a particularly vulnerable story when, after a miscarriage, his wife prayed, “God, I know you’re not mean, but it sure feels like it right now.” She is praying like a psalm of lament in that prayer, reminding herself of the truth of what she knows about God and his character, yet also unafraid to show the depth of the pain to her Lord and name it as such. In a world where we shy away from negative emotions, the psalter reminds us they are our constant companions in life because it is filled with them. One third of the psalms are psalms of lament. So, if you’re in the midst of a rough season currently, know that you’re in good company there! And it’s actually both historical and biblical. The ability to lament and hold tension is what allows us to be the people described in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” We sit in the tension of the now and the not yet. We are a gestating people with hope yet unbirthed. When I am in the most pain and at my most perplexed, that is the reminder that I need.
Read the psalms and notice the emotions. See which ones feel familiar to where you are living currently. One author said all psalms could be divided into categories of Help! Thanks! And Wow! All are important. All are inspired. All are part of the human experience. God is big enough to handle all of your emotions, and that includes lament.
