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Psalms of Lament – Psalms 88 and 130

Psalms of Lament – Psalms 88 and 130

Last updated on: August 30, 2026 at 2:00 pm by Rob Giannamore

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Psalms of Lament – Psalms 88 and 130 2026-08-30T14:00:01-04:00 Rob Giannamore

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Miller’s Station UMC| August 29, 2026| Anchor Verse – Psalms 88 and 130

To cry is to be human. When we come into the world, we often enter with a cry. I remember the first cries of my children. It was their declaration that they had arrived. In those first cries, they were exclaiming their discomfort with this new, bright, loud, and cold world. While we can all agree that this type of crying is normal and appropriate, in the west, we want to avoid negative feelings and therefore the practice of lament is often misunderstood. This week, I want to explore the lament Psalms and demonstrate that lament is more than mourning.

Understanding Lament: More Than Mourning

In Judaism, and in the Old Testament and even in other Middle Eastern cultures, lament is not crying is a form of prayer. One third of the book of Psalms are lament prayers. Later in this post, I will talk about grief for a moment. For much of this post, I want to lean on our Jewish brothers and sisters and explore lament from their perspective and how we can bring the practice into our own spiritual regimen.

Benedict Janecko, whose work has helped guide us over these last four weeks, reminds us that when Israel suffered, she did not keep her sorrow bottled up. She did not settle for a quiet whimper or a private groan. Israel brought her pain out into the open before a compassionate God. She cried, she sang, she wailed, and she prayed with the hope that God was listening. And this is important for us to hear: even when the lament begins in sorrow, it almost always moves toward confidence and hope.

Janecko also notes that lament has a kind of shape to it. It gives language to what it feels like to be human when life hurts. Sometimes it begins by calling on God. Sometimes it pours out grief. Sometimes it pleads for help. Sometimes it admits guilt. And sometimes, even if only by the fingernails, it reaches for hope and trusts that God still hears.

Kinot– Poems of Lament

In Judaism, a kinot (the plural is kinot, but just one is called a kinah) is the Hebrew word for mournful liturgical poems. One might think of “poetry as something that you read on your porch on a Sunday afternoon while sipping a cup of tea – but this is a little different. Kinot are poems that we recite aloud in synagogue, as part of a community, as a spiritual practice: as a way of somehow communicating with or beseeching God, and of getting into the spirit of mourning” (Aleph Beta, 2023). For the early Hebrew people, kinah was a practice to mourn the destruction of their temple and later as a practice as a community to be recited at burials, where kinot would be sung to pull at the heartstrings of those who suffered a loss. As you can see, these are intentional practices that are embraced and celebrated as part of worship for the Jewish community.

I remember in my early preaching days when the “what would Jesus do” movement was going around. As cringy as it is now, Jesus would have actively participated in this practice and can be seen at the death of his friend Lazarus. For me, the words, “Jesus wept” are the most powerful words in the Gospels.

In the Christian, canon, the Book of Lamentations is the book the Jewish people call Eicha or Sefir Kinot. The purpose of reciting Eicha was to “arouse one’s heart to mourn,” A closer look at the role of kinot in the Old Testament demonstrates many instances of kinot. For example, David mourning the death of Jonathon. Halbertal, in his article on lamentation, offers, “A mourner experiences loneliness. His beloved is gone, he has lost the umbilical cord that had bound him to the world. His state of solitude is intensified by the immense gulf between his inner experience of loss and the world around him, which seems to proceed as always, with no moment of pause, as if nothing had happened”. Here I feel we can experience the tangible reality of the pain of suffering, of grief.

Halbertal offers this synopsis of the active nature and interrelatedness one has with their community during times of lament. He offers:

The mourner does not shave or bathe, does not wear clean clothes, and is not allowed to leave his home; he loses his social persona, and withdraws in solitude from the world. The consolers who come to the mourner try to woo him back to the world; they extend their hands to him as if to replace the hand that had been stretched to him from the world but is there no more. They share in his pain, providing him with an echo of his inner experience of grief, affirming some parallel between his inner state and the outside world. They are supposed to bring him back to the world to redeem him from his solitude.

If you hear anything from this, hear this – do not shy away from lament. We are told that men don’t cry that sometimes we just need to get over it and that lasting grief is a sign of weakness. Lament is not a sign of weakness but a testament to the depth of our trust in God. When we dare to bring our tears, our grief, and our unanswered questions before the Lord, we are following in the footsteps of generations who knew that God welcomes honest hearts and broken spirits. Insteand of being a people who bottle up our sorrow, let us instead lift our voices together—crying, singing, and praying—knowing that even in our darkest moments, hope has the final word. I challenge you to let lament move us from sorrow to trust, from isolation to community, and may our practice of lament make us more compassionate, more authentic, and ever more anchored in the love of God.

The Spiritual Practice of Lament

Lament is not limited to to the ancients who practiced in temple courts or synagogue prayers; lament is also a spiritual practice for us. It is part of making you a spiritual practice. It helps and challenges us to become honest before God. Each of us is still being formed. Each of us is still learning how to bring our whole selves before the Creator: our faith and our fear, our gratitude and our grief, our confidence and our questions.

This is where lament becomes something we do. It gives us permission to stop pretending, to stop swallowing sorrow, and to come before God as we really are. So the question becomes very practical: when life hurts, when grief rises, when faith feels thin, how do we actually lament?

Halbertal whom I mentioned earlier gives us four movements, and I want us to hear them not as a formula to memorize, but as a pathway of prayer to walk when our hearts are heavy.

First, turn to God. Before we fix anything, before we explain anything, before we pretend we are fine, lament begins by turning our face toward the One who can hold the whole truth of our lives.

Second, bring your complaint. God is not offended by honest pain. The Psalms teach us that faith does not require us to hide our questions. Faith gives us somewhere holy to take them.

Third, ask for help. Lament is not despair shouted into the dark. It is a prayer that still believes God hears, still believes mercy is possible, and still dares to say, “Lord, come near.”

And finally, choose to trust. Not because everything suddenly makes sense, not because the pain disappears, but because even in the valley, God is still God, and God is still with us.

That last one hits, choose to trust. In this list, we see the active nature of lament, that is not a static event that is done alone in silence. Instead it is a community event. Trust then is a secondary practice that also needs to be cultivated in these times. I choose as a follower of Jesus to believe that God is right with us, allowing the healing powers of medicine do its thing, to let the sting of grief, be painful as long as it needs to be and to trust that whatever ok is for the next moment is the okay that needed to be present in the next moment. If Buddhism and Stoicism have taught me anything over the years is that things change. Seneca offers that “we, however, may be forgiving for bursting into tears, if only our tears have not flowed to excess and if we have checked them by our own effort.” Again, he offers, “but even while you keep watch it (your grief) slips away from you, and the sharper it is, the more speedily it comes to an end.”

Friends, in closing if life has you down and you are just not feeling it, allow these feelings to arise and fall. As a practice of you, allowing yourself to mourn, to be sad, to be unhappy with the way things are going or have gone enhances your authenticity. Each of us is a work in progress. The practice of you to practice your becoming and trusting God to co create with us the next steps in our journey of this becoming.

As we conclude this series on the Psalms, I hope over the last four weeks, I have given you a powerful tool to help your prayer life. May the Psalms serve as a guide for your daily walk, whether you are reflecting on Psalm 23 for daily guidance – I drink everyday from a mug that has this Psalm on it. Or if you are having moments of doubt of God’s goodness and providence, may Psalm 136 remind you of God’s lovingkindness. If you are just not feeling it, let down by God and society, let Psalm 88 or 130 be your guide to lament. Whatever you are experiencing, the Psalms can be a balm and a voice wherever you find life each day. Amen

Benediction

Friends, hear these words from 1 Peter 5:10:

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.”

Friends, may you go … May you be happy, may be healthy and may you be free from suffering this week, Amen.

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