… thoughts, I am sinning.” He opens the Psalter and finds the same cry for help there.
A third of the Psalter is a cry
Biblical scholars have long noted that approximately a third of all psalms are laments filled with complaints, reproaches, and cries for help. The Psalmist asks God in despair: “Awake, why do You sleep, O Lord? Arise, do not cast us off forever” (Ps. 44:23). King David cries out: “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1). Virtually every phrase carries a reproach: “Lord, You are sleeping, You have forgotten me, You have turned away from me.”
The Church could have left these lines from the liturgical readings – they are far too uncomfortable for someone who wishes to see in God only a source of consolation. But they were not struck out.
St. John Chrysostom, commenting on the words of Psalm 43, observes …
God heard David's cry, and He will hear ours too
A third of the biblical psalms are cries of pain, reproaches, and anger directed at God. The Church did not remove a single line from them – for in this one can find support.
A person buries a loved one, receives sad news from the front, wakes up to an air raid siren for the fifth year in a row – and at some point catches himself thinking: “Lord, where are You?” And immediately a second thought follows: “I probably shouldn’t think like that; God punishes people for such thoughts, I am sinning.” He opens the Psalter and finds the same cry for help there.
A third of the Psalter is a cry
Biblical scholars have long noted that approximately a third of all psalms are laments filled with complaints, reproaches, and cries for help. The Psalmist asks God in despair: “Awake, why do You sleep, O Lord? Arise, do not cast us off forever” (Ps. 44:23). King David cries out: “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1). Virtually every phrase carries a reproach: “Lord, You are sleeping, You have forgotten me, You have turned away from me.”
The Church could have left these lines from the liturgical readings – they are far too uncomfortable for someone who wishes to see in God only a source of consolation. But they were not struck out.
St. John Chrysostom, commenting on the words of Psalm 43, observes that believers who accuse their Creator nevertheless continue to trust in Him. This is the heart of biblical lament: weeping and complaint do not exclude faithfulness to God; they accompany it.
The human prayer of God
On the Cross, in the final hours of His earthly life, the Lord Jesus Christ cries out: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). What is this? It is the opening line of Psalm 22 – an ancient lament that every Jew knew by heart.
Christ, being God, cries out as a Man, experiencing the sense of abandonment and hearing the silence of Heaven at the moment when His physical pain reaches its limit.
If the Son of God in His human nature uttered these words, it would be strange to deny our own ability to complain to God about the burdens of life’s cross.
The psalm that offers no consolation
Most laments in the Psalter nonetheless carry a note of light. The author cries out, complains; and then, toward the end of the psalm, remembers God and concludes his accusatory speech with words of hope. But there is an exception to this rule. Psalm 87, on the contrary, begins with a cry to the Lord and ends with the words: “Friend and neighbour thou hast put far from me: and my acquaintance, because of misery” (Ps. 87:19). And that is all. There is no turning toward the light, no final: “But I will praise You nonetheless.” The darkness in the author’s soul remains darkness until the very last line.
This psalm is proof that God does not require a performance of cheerfulness from a grieving person. One may end a prayer in gloom, in utter darkness.
The very presence of such a text in Scripture is already a consolation: it means this pain has its place, and there is no need to try to conceal it.
The difference between lamentation and despondency
It is important here not to confuse lamentation with despondency. Lamentation is pain cast into the face of God, directed toward Him, still awaiting an answer. Despondency is pain that turns inward, when a person stops complaining to anyone because they no longer believe there is any point in doing so.
For fifteen years, St. Silouan the Athonite struggled with thoughts of despair until one day he heard an answer in his heart: "Keep your mind in hell and despair not." In other words, keep your mind in the darkness of hell, so as not to sin. But at the same time, do not despair.
Elder Silouan later explained: many ascetics, in a state of God-forsakenness, fall into despair and are therefore unable to go further. But one who remembers that the Lord loves him nonetheless stands firm as a stronghold against the shifting winds.
The lament psalms allow a person to stand at the very edge of darkness, but with his face turned toward God.
God allows us to reproach Him
King David, the author of some of the most intense and audacious psalms, is called by Scripture a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14). God does not turn away from the person who has dared to reproach Him for His silence. He heard that reproach and allowed it to remain written forever, so that any one of us might repeat it.
This means we can bring to God our rage, our “how long,” our “why have You forsaken me”, and He will receive our cries.
Prayer need not begin with words of thanksgiving. Sometimes it begins with honest words of reproach: “Arise, Lord, why do You sleep?” And in response we will hear the words of the Savior from the Gospel: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).