It was raining on the road to Emmaus, and not very glorious,and one of them kept humming a rain songthat was popular in the seventies, and thought to himself,“How strange it is, in the midst of wonder and misery,that I remember a dusty car radio, and this songplaying as a friend’s mom drove us to … Continue reading Rain Song on the Road to Emmaus
Laments & Praise Last Sunday, we finished our five-part series on Lament by considering praise. It is rather beautiful that laments, which are so honest and raw about negative emotions, also have plenty of room for thanksgiving and expressions of joy. The ancient Israelites seemed to know that emotive prayer couldn’t be completely honest if … Continue reading Lament & Praise
Now we come to what is probably the most perilous moment in a lament. You might think that there’s peril in complaint, but it’s petition that is spiritually dangerous. Evelyn Underhill compared it with magic, the practice of a kind of wish-fulfillment that can easily disappoint if the things we pray for don’t appear in … Continue reading Laments & Petition
Continuing our project of writing laments using the ancient literary forms found in the Hebrew Scriptures, we turn to the naming of covenant. It is probably good to reiterate that the form of ancient lament has five parts: invocation; honest complaint; expressions of confidence; petition; and praise. Today we investigate the third part, which actually … Continue reading Laments & Expressions of Confidence
Featured Image Credit: Kathe Kollwitz, "The Widow," print, 1921 On Sunday, we continued to write laments in the style of the ancient Israelites. As I said in the last post, the genre of Biblical lament has five basic parts: invocation; honest complaint; expressions of confidence; petition; and praise. In today’s post, I’ll talk about honest … Continue reading Laments & Honest Complaint
KPB Stevens 