The Costly Loss of Lament

In your article, The Costly Loss of Lament is one of those classics that has had an enormous impact on a lot of people. Is that dialogical quality what led you to think through lament? Well, it's hard to know how that all came upon me. But I think it was my pastoral awareness that people in deep desperation begin to issue commands to God in their petitionary prayers. So it is a mandate from below that is really characteristic of laments and complaints.