“I trust in you, O LORD . . . My times are in your hand.”

Psalm 31 is a psalm of lament, and we see the depth of that lamentation in verses 9-16. While the psalmist cries out about wasting away in grief and sorrow, there is also a basic affirmation: “I trust in you, O LORD . . . My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors. Let your face shine upon your servant . . . ” In the lament of Psalm 31, we see a foreshadowing of Jesus in his last week.

We tend to shy away from the notion of lament, possibly because this depth of grief seems too intimate for our time. We reserve lament for times of grief, especially death.

I come from the Armenian Orthodox tradition. The Armenian Gregory of Narek (Grigor Narekatsi) wrote a book of ninety-five prayers in the year 1001 that has been actively circulated since then. Armenians know his work as The Lamentations of Narek. (Thomas Samuelian’s translation is the best version in English, titled Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart.) In many of these prayers, Gregory writes of his sense of brokenness and how he feels that he does not measure up to his calling as a disciple of Christ. For example, here he laments and pleads: “Accept with sweetness, almighty Lord, my bitter prayers. Look with pity upon my mournful face. Dispel, all-bestowing God, my shameful sadness” (Prayer 12, C). Yet always in the prayers of Narekatsi is the appeal to the mercy of God, leading to his title as “The Doctor of Mercy,” bestowed by Pope Francis who declared Gregory a Doctor of the Church.

An honest assessment of our lives may well point us to a renewed acquaintance with lament—not to live with a deep sense of sorrow but to live with an awareness of our brokenness and our need for mercy.