Perhaps you feel as though you must put on a good face, a decent front for others to see.  You don’t like other people seeing you upset or cry because it can be embarrassing.  Sometimes you might even put up a front with God.  Maybe you think God wants everyone to be perpetually happy and always come to Him with joy and gladness.  That would not be an accurate view of God.

            One of the most faithful people in Holy Scripture, Jeremiah, freely and unabashedly lamented before God – to the point of wishing he were dead.  That’s right.  Jeremiah, the incredible prophet of God, was so despondent and ashamed that he wished he were never even born.  “Why did I have to be born? Was it just to suffer and die in shame?”

            To say that Jeremiah had a difficult ministry is an understatement.  He had the ministry from hell, ministering and prophesying to people who neither liked him, nor his message to them.  In the middle of it all, Jeremiah through up his hands and let out his complaint to God.  Jeremiah was in such misery doing his ministry that he wished he was stillborn.

            Jeremiah, however, is not alone in the Bible.  David had no scruples about letting God know how he felt about his dire circumstances.  Job, likely the most famous sufferer of all, spent time doing nothing but lamenting his terrible losses for months.  What all three of them have in common is that they openly grieved with great tears, but never cursed God and did not forsake Him.

            Lamentation is the sacred space between intense grieving before God without blaming Him for our losses.  I would even argue that lamenting and grieving before God is a necessary spiritual practice which needs full recognition in the Body of Christ.  Please think about that last statement, and consider how it might become a reality in your own life and context.

            The prophet Jeremiah had a tough gig.  God didn’t give him much choice about his life’s work.  Jeremiah was commissioned by God with a message of doom and destruction.  If that weren’t enough, God promised him that no one would respond, nobody would repent, and not one person would listen to what he had to say.

            The reality of Jeremiah’s life-work is what makes his response in our Old Testament lesson for today understandable: “Sometimes I tell myself not to think about you, LORD, or even mention your name.  But your message burns in my heart and bones, and I cannot keep silent.”

            Maybe you can relate in some small way.  It isn’t always easy talking about God to others, let alone talking about some subject pertaining to Him which other people really don’t want to hear.  Yet, as the people of God, we discover it is much more painful to keep it all inside than it is letting it out and taking the consequences as they may come.

            Or, it could be that you resonate with Jeremiah’s trying to distance himself from God.  You were hurt, wounded in some way, and no matter how hard you run away from him God is the hound of heaven that tracks you down and won’t leave you alone.

            Don’t keep silent.  Speak.  Let out what is important to you.  Ignoring it, wishing it would go away, or thinking God will eventually give-up isn’t going to happen, my friend.  Let the message burn in your heart.  Do something about it… today!