These many years later, I can still remember the

sinking feeling in my stomach and the burning in my

cheeks. I was standing next to a friend, Nathan, a man

in his late twenties, and we were at the funeral home.

It was a Thursday evening. Vases of flowers and boxes

of Kleenex occupied every surface in sight. We were

there at that funeral home on that Thursday evening,

standing side-by-side, because my friend’s father had

died. It was both tragic and unexpected. No chance to

say goodbye. It seemed like every person in that small

town had come. My friend was visibly distressed.

He was struggling to maintain the energy necessary

to greet that long line of visitors. He wanted to be

anywhere except here. You could see it in his eyes.

A family friend approached and shook his hand. He

politely thanked the man for coming, for supporting

the family. And then, rather than move along, the man

patted my friend on his back and said, “I know it’s

hard right now, son, but in time you’ll see this was all

a part of God’s plan.”

The grieving son looked quizzically at his would-be

comforter, thanked him, and then turned and looked

straight at me. What I saw now was not sadness

but bewildered frustration, even anger. Even in this

moment, I can feel the force of those words. Part of

God’s plan. Someday you’ll see. Now to be clear, I have

no doubt that the objective of the visiting friend was

sincere. I have no doubt that he intended, he meant,

to bring comfort. But I also know—because I saw it

with my own eyes and not for the last time—that his

choice of words brought only pain in that moment.

The cliché did not hold the weight.

Was there something different the man should have

said? How are we to make sense of the unthinkable?

Where is God when the innocent suffer and the

grieving can find no comfort? What does our faith

offer to us when God is silent? When God is absent?

I wonder if you have ever prayed the words of Psalm

13. I wonder if you have ever asked how long the pain

will last, if you have ever questioned the suffering of

the righteous. I wonder if you have ever felt forgotten.

Abandoned. Forsaken. Have you ever cried out to God

in anger? I have. I have reached the outer limits of

my faith. I have lost patience with God’s inexplicable

absence when I needed the most. I have become

angry at pain I do not understand and cruelty I cannot

accept. I have wondered how long such conditions

will be permitted to persist, and I have wondered

whether God has simply abandoned us all.

If you have never asked those questions, then God

bless you. But if you have been there, then perhaps

the words of the Psalmist will find a home in your

heart. This book of poetic prayers contains forty-two

psalms of lament—nearly a third of the total collection.

Each one offers an unfiltered and unedited picture

of the relationship between God and God’s people in

moments of particular pain, doubt, and despair. These

psalms move beyond pious platitudes to embrace the

realities of human life. They transcend statements of

faith to vulnerable confession. They open a deeper

understanding of our relationship to God.

And so, they can comfort us in ways that vapid

expressions of condescending concocted

confidence cannot. They refuse to ignore the

reality of suffering. They face it head on. They invite

honesty. They bear witness to a God who can bear

the complexities of our lives. A God who is with us.

With us not only in the moments of triumph and

glory, celebration and rejoicing. A God who goes

with us into the valley of the shadow of death. Into

the deepest depths of our despair.

And at its most faithful, at our most faithful, this is

how the community of faith functions as well. It is

true that none of us can carry the weight of belief

all by ourselves. It is true that we need others who

share our pain, who walk alongside us, who prop

us up when we are falling. Because the life of faith

is no predictable path of steadily growing certainty.

There are mountains and there are valleys. Our

faith is unflinching at one moment and flickering

the very next. This is what it means to be human.

And so, we need each other.

When I was twelve years old, my mother picked me

up from school early so that I could attend the funeral

of Edmund Cooper. Mr. Edmund was an elderly

member of our church. He had battled cancer for

some time. Edmund and his wife, Miss Lena, were

like grandparents to my siblings and me. We spent

many afternoons at their home, playing dominoes

on the floor or chasing each other in their expansive

backyard. Miss Lena was a saint. She was the kind

of person who just radiated the joy of faith in every

setting. But not that afternoon. Not that day.

I will never forget watching from the back of the

sanctuary as the organ played and Miss Lena walked

down the aisle all by herself. Her gaze was not lifted

up or turned side to side. She is looking down at the

floor, and she is sobbing. I had never seen her cry.

It made me anxious and fearful. I wanted to bolt, to

escape that heavy place. Throughout the service, I

could see her. She was inconsolable. Her weeping

was unceasing. She simply never stopped crying.

Her shoulders were shaking with grief. I hated every

moment of that service, and afterwards, I ran to my

father’s office. I closed the door to hide.

Later, when I finally gathered my courage to walk into

the fellowship hall, I saw something I will never forget.

As our church family gathered for the traditional

cookies and punch, Miss Lena was sitting on a metal

folding chair in the corner. She was no longer alone.

She was no longer weeping. No, she was surrounded.

She was surrounded by all her church grandchildren,

some of them well into their forties. She was laughing

and smiling. She was kissing cheeks, just like she

always did. Now listen, the grief was real. It had not

magically, suddenly, miraculously disappeared, and

no one pretended it had. But in those moments,

Miss Lena was lifted by a community of faith whose

presence mattered far more than their statements. It

was beautiful. And sacred.

In a powerful eulogy for his dear friend, the writer

George Saunders spoke these words: “The disaster of

his loss will fade. It will be replaced by the realization

of what a miracle it was that he ever existed in the

first place. But for now, there is just grief. Grief is, in a

sense, the bill that comes due for love.”

The cost of love is grief. The answer of faith to

suffering is not sentimental platitude meant to mask

the awkwardness or drown the tears. Faith’s answer is

simply presence. Use words sparingly if at all.

William Sloane Coffin was one of the great preachers

of the last century, and he was also a father who lost

his son, Alex, in a tragic accident. The very next week,

Coffin gave Alex’s eulogy. And here is what he says:

“When a person dies, there are many things that can

be said, but there is at least one thing that should

never be said. The night after Alex died, I was sitting

in the living room of one of my sister’s houses outside

of Boston, when the front door opened and in came

a nice-looking, middle-aged woman, carrying about

eighteen quiches. When she saw me, she shook her

head, then headed for the kitchen, saying sadly over

her shoulder, ‘I just don’t understand the will of God.’

Instantly I was up in hot pursuit, swarming all over

her. ‘I’ll say you don’t, lady!’ I said.” Coffin continued,

“For some reason, nothing so infuriates me as the

incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it

through their heads that God doesn’t go around this

world with his finger on triggers, with his fists around

knives, with his hands on steering wheels…The

one thing that should never be said when someone

dies tragically is ‘It is the will of God.’ Never do we

know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in

knowing that it was not the will of God that my son

die, that when the waves closed over his sinking car,

God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”

That’s it. The God of the Psalms, the God of the

prophets, the God of Jesus Christ, the God whom we

worship today, is simply incapable of keeping distant

from our suffering. The God whom we worship is

one of vulnerability and sacrificial love. The God we

worship fully embraces our human lives. God, whose

heart breaks for the brokenness of humanity and all

creation. For us, this was most clearly demonstrated

on a hill called Golgotha, where Jesus Christ revealed

to us a God who will suffer the depths of human pain

for the sake of human relationship. The cross for us is

a sign of hope because it reveals a God who takes on

human flesh and shares in human suffering.

Presence. Presence. This is what God offers, and

it is the gift we can offer one another as well. Use

words sparingly if at all. No platitudes to block the

pain. Simply sit in the darkness long enough to

receive what it has to offer. The promise of God is the

promise of presence.

No one is forever lost because God will find us all.

No one is truly alone, because God walks with each.

Every single soul of unimaginable worth because

each belongs to God.

And so, even from the valleys, we cry to God. We cling

to the conviction that God permits nothing to separate

us from divine love, that God goes to the depths with

us, that God stays right there with us in our pain.

And so, our hope will never rest on human ability.

Our faith will never be grounded in knowing the right

answers or speaking the right words. Our hope is in

God’s grace. Our faith is rooted in God’s promise of

presence. We can trust God’s sturdy love enough to

stay in the discomfort of unexplained suffering. And

we can trust the truth sung by the Psalmist. Joy will

find us again. Joy will find you again.

Hold fast. Hang on. You belong to God. Amen.