Death and all His Friends: Part 1

Life is good… for the most part that is. Until some intruder, some interloper, called confusion or despair, lament or grief, loss or (gulp) death comes crashing in. And then there is no telling where the mind and heart can travel. Like the proverbial y in the ointment, life’s apparent setbacks can threaten the whole. Has everything come undone? How can I know the meaning of such things? Does life even have a meaning? The ancient book of Lamentations wrestled with just such questions. In daring fashion, it pulls no punches, considers no realm of human questioning out of bounds. Some people are surprised by this. Some assume that faith is thinking happy thoughts, adopting a positive attitude, having con dence that things will turn out well. How could this book of poems be included in our Scriptures? Why is it there? Faith, to be sure, is con dence, but not a false or untested con dence. Faith is willing to expose itself to the full gamut of questions. And that is why we need Lament. In this series we would like to take the wrapper o our cultural tendency to avoid. We want to be more honest about the tougher parts of life, and actually, the Bible tends to rub our noses in the harder parts, because the Bible is a whole lot more honest about life than we tend to be. Lamentations may not provide the complete answer we need, but it does ask a lot of the right questions. In this series we are going to look at some of those questions, knowing with con dence that our faith is better for it.