Tough times can make us better. If we lament well, if we process pain effectively, if we opt for thorough wrestling instead of shallow dismissals, we can be transformed into more compassionate, more trusting, more mature disciples of the One who chose to endure the ultimate suffering “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2).

As I begin writing this article, reports come in like a tsunami about the horrors between Israel and Gaza. Meanwhile, American college students protest with slogans that oversimplify amazingly complex issues. In Washington, our political leaders seem more interested in their own fame than in the well-being of our country or the world. It’s enough to make you throw your hands up in the air and run for distractions you find most consuming.

I’ll let others more qualified and informed than myself offer political and military strategies. And I’ll save my comments about theological perspectives about Israel for other writings. I will say, as a follower of the One who called himself “the truth,” it is deeply disturbing that we live in a time of a famine for the truth. Some so-called “news” agencies seem incapable of presenting the facts without bias and many people seem to have no difficulty blatantly lying to advance sympathy from others. This drought of truthfulness may do more harm than the missiles flying over the Israel/Gaza border.

Regardless of what transpires militarily or diplomatically over the next few months, Christians are called to “love our neighbors.” And one of the most important ways (perhaps the most important way) is through prayer. But how can we pray to advance the Kingdom of God while not feeling dragged down in despair. I confess I find this a great challenge.

The greatest help for me, and therefore the one I am commending in this article, is to follow the templates of Lament that we find dozens of times in the Book of Psalms. Lamenting (as starkly contrasted with griping, complaining, moping, or despairing) is a rarely practiced but remarkably powerful spiritual discipline for trying times such as these. If we can develop the spiritual muscle memory of praying prayers of lament, we will grow stronger during difficult times rather than being discouraged by them.

If you were to categorize the Psalms, as many have done, you’d find groupings such as Thanksgiving Psalms, Royal Psalms, Messianic Psalms, and others including Lament Psalms. You’d also find that there are more lament Psalms than any other category. Apparently, God wants us to learn how to cry out to him during the darkest of moments.

Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke, with a lifelong focus on the psalms, comments, “We may wonder how lament or complaint can coexist with faith, so it is worth recalling well that over a third of the Psalms are laments. This observation by itself informs us that lament and faith are not incompatible. Certainly, it is sinful to complain in unbelief, but lament need not be untrusting of God’s providential care.”[i]

Lament Psalms include common ingredients­­­: cries of lament, reminders of God’s character, pleas for deliverance, and statements of hope. These prayers flow from honest lament to confident trust. They don’t always follow the same sequence but all but one land in a place of strength.

Psalm 88, the outlier, ends with these seemingly hopeless words, “Darkness is my closest friend.” I used to think this was a totally despairing Psalm that never turned the corner. I took ironic encouragement that, sometimes, life does seem as dark as that. But a closer reading of Psalm 88 won’t allow for such a lopsided perspective. Note how the psalmist begins: he cries out to “the God who saves me.” In other words, he began in the place of hope. The very fact that he chose to pray at all expresses a faith we need to find during the darkest of days.

Psalm 13, a beautiful and brief lament can serve as an instructive guide to all the other lament Psalms. Consider its emotional honesty, its theological depth, and its profound expression of trust.

How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
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?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to LORD ‘s praise,
for he has been good to me.

We begin to lament well by recounting to God our pain. Notice how the psalm begins with four statements that start, “How long?” This is not a calmed, cool, “I’m just asking a question” sequence of inquiries. The psalmist is wailing. He feels like God has forgotten him and turned his face away. Pause there for a second. Have you ever felt like God has forgotten you or that he’s ignoring you? Do you feel the pain behind such a blatant contradiction to what we (and this psalmist as well!) know to be true? Our God never forgets anything. He knows everything. And the greatest blessing you can offer someone is for God to “make his face shine upon you.” (see Numbers 6:25). So, to cry out to God the way this psalmist does is not a quiet sobbing in the corner. The volume is turned up high.

Note also that the psalmist looks inward and outward. He wrestles with his thoughts and looks at his enemies. He fears that his foes will take credit for his demise. The Bible talks about our enemies quite often. For most of us, we can think of few human beings who hate us. So, we (rightly!) turn our attention to the greatest enemy of our souls, the devil himself. True enough. But we should not be naive enough to think we don’t have people who hate us. We follow the One who was hated and scorned—enough that they nailed him to a cross. If we haven’t experienced persecution because of our faith yet, we shouldn’t be surprised if that changes sooner than we’d like.

Some of us, depending on our personality or culture, resist this terribly. We think the psalmist was sinning when he uttered the first four verses of this psalm. Or we rush to a theological resolution like, “Well…that’s just his flesh talking. He gets straightened out when he remembers that ‘greater is he who is you than he who is in the world.’” To be sure, I John 4:4 is true. But we rush too quickly to resolutions that don’t really resolve if we skim past the lengthy laments in these psalms. We should also remember the many honest expressions of pain in Job, the Prophets, the entire book of Lamentations, and Jesus’s intense prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. God doesn’t tell us to shut up or get ahold of ourselves when we cry out to him in our pain. He listens. And his word encourages us to keep talking—to him and to ourselves—until we see the fullest picture possible.

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