12 Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), La 1:12.
There are several things I could discuss about this verse, but I’ve been thinking about the sorrow. When we are in trouble, many of us feel that we are suffering in ways nobody else can understand.
In one sense, your sorrow is your own. You experience sorrow in individual ways. Your feelings are your own feelings. But very often when we think this we are missing the suffering of others, suffering we don’t understand and that might even be suffering worse than we are.
The problem is that there is no real way to measure pain, suffering, and grief. Is what I have experienced more or less than what you have experienced? Neither of us really know. We can’t measure our suffering against our ability to endure.
Despite all that, I am often shamed when I’m complaining, even just in my own mind, and then find out someone else is experiencing something I perceive to be worse. But I still don’t know the weight of that suffering to another person even when I know it is great.
In lamentation, we long to have our suffering acknowledged. It is part of being seen and recognized. In scripture the hoped-for recognition is from God. That is the purpose of lamentation. We recognize and express the reality, and we look for the recognition of our pain.
I will confess that I really don’t like to talk about difficulties. I prefer to keep on a proper “faith face” that suggests everything is fine whether it is or not. That face is often what we put on to avoid lamentation.
So, honest face or faith face?
(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)
