ISSUES OF FAITH: Find hope in times of lamentation

Published 1:30 am Friday, March 20, 2026

HAPPY SPRING! EARLY signs of spring have been around for a few weeks with a warmer-than-usual winter but were chilled and blown just last week. Remember? Our daffodils and crocus didn’t fare too well. The tulips kept their heads down and seemed to be OK though.

As happy as I am now to officially greet the Equinox, I have to admit I have felt pummeled throughout this whole Season of Lent by the gale force winds of national and international events now culminating in an escalating Middle Eastern war that is shaking the world.

The word “lament” comes to mind for me. It’s an old-fashioned word that cups a combination of emotions I feel from grief and anger to fear, and even questioning God’s apparent silence in the faces of tragedy.

From recent conversations with parishioners and visitors, I sense that many share my sense of lament.

The answer to an open-ended question like “how are you feeling?” is answered less with words than with the body language of furrowed brows and heaved shoulders.

Right words are hard to find. We are being emotionally overwhelmed with impossible-to-avoid sights and sounds of war-time violence and domestic terrorism.

Our increasing numbness to tragedy is as lamentable as much as the violence that we now see too frequently.

My sense of lament this year has shaped the way I’ve heard our Lenten scriptures.

Maybe you, too, if you are a part of a congregation that follows the Revised Common Lectionary, that three-year cycle of seasonal scripture readings we hear in worship. Otherwise, the stories are probably still familiar.

The stories I’ve heard for years have taken on a more personal meaning. As only one example, I haven’t just empathized with those in the crowds shouting for Jesus to heal them, I have wanted to be in that crowd to get close to the Master and plead for my healing. Know what I mean?

We heard again about Nicodemus’ nighttime visit to Jesus, to learn more about his message that a spiritual rebirth is needed to make sense of Jesus’ countercultural message, that the least of us are to be the first in line. How many of us would love to have a personal private conversation with Jesus to explain just how to do that in a world where shouldering to the front is more typical and rewarded.

We heard again, too, the story of the nameless Samaritan woman at the well. How many of us are spiritually dehydrated and yearn to drink the kind of water Jesus offered her that will never leave us thirsty again?

Jesus’ bringing a long-dead Lazarus to life is another one, and we want to be brought back to our own full life in these life-defying, numbing times.

Lent is a time to honestly and openly lament the impacts of societal and personal shortcomings. But embedded in that recognition is also the opportunity for forgiveness and consolation, and that gives us hope for the future. A spiritual springtime of hope.

Brené Brown, the psychologist, comments in her book “Atlas of the Heart” that hope is learned in times of struggle and discomfort, and I would add lament. Lent is a time to relearn how to hope, and it is easier to do together than by yourself.

The Lutheran worship liturgy shares words with many other branches of Christianity that begin our Lenten services with an invitation to come clean together in mutual lament for our parts in missing the mark of how God has invited us to live.

My paraphrase of that litany is, “We have missed the mark Lord in our thoughts, what we have said, by what we have done and what we have left undone. In your mercy, forgive us, renew us and lead us so we can take joy in fully living and walking in your ways.”

Our liturgy continues with the assurance that God, who is rich in mercy, loves us still no matter what and welcomes us back on the trail after we realize we have missed a direction sign or two.

Join with me in these last couple of weeks of Lent to take time to lament, but also to hope.

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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Don Corson is an Ordained Deacon in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) and the winemaker for a local winery. He is also the minister for Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Forks. His email is ccwinemaker@gmail.com.