Don't Stop Lamenting: How to Persevere through Pain

Don’t Stop Lamenting: How to Persevere When You’re in Pain

Lamentations 5:1-22

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New City Catechism Question #23

Why must the Redeemer be truly God?

That because of his divine nature his obedience and suffering would be perfect and effective; and also that he would be able to bear the righteous anger of God against sin and yet overcome death.

PASTORAL PRAYER

Thanksgiving . . .

Filling with the Holy Spirit

Supplication . . .

PBC volunteers

Bethel Baptist Church (Bloxom) -- John Gillespie

Against suicide

Slovenia—against agnosticism, New Age movement, nominal Christianity, secularism

Sermon

SERMON

On Sunday afternoon, June 12, 1983, Nicholas Wolterstorff received a phone call that forever shattered his comfortable life. Nicholas and his wife Claire had four children. Their oldest son, Eric, was studying abroad in Munich, Germany, working on a doctoral dissertation in architectural history. The phone call was from Eric’s landlady.

“Mr. Wolterstorff, I must give you some bad news.”

“Yes.”

“Eric has been climbing in the mountains and has had an accident.”

“Yes.”

“Eric has had a serious accident.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Wolterstorff, I must tell you, Eric is dead. Mr. Wolterstorff, are you there? You must come at once! Mr. Worlterstorff, Eric is dead.”

Over the following year, Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote a book entitled Lament for a Son. In that book he shares this profound insight about suffering: often suffering helps us to see clearly. He wrote this: "I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see."ii Nicolas Worlterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), loc. 127 of 562, Kindle.

Turn in your Bibles to Lamentations 5. As we conclude our study of this book, I hope you’re beginning to see things that dry eyes could not see. We’ve learned a lot about lament over the past few months. We’ve learned that lament is a prayer in pain that turns to God with honest complaints and bold requests resulting in a decision to trust. We’ve watched Jeremiah’s soul tunnel towards hope, as he lamented the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. We’ve learned that often our pain is rooted in the painful discipline of a loving God. We’ve been reminded that the moon is always round, even when you can’t see it. We’ve learned how to repent. We’ve unmasked our phony saviors.

My prayer is that we won’t quickly move past these lessons. In God’s providence, we’ve studied this book during a national season of dark clouds and deep suffering. But suffering will not end when the rioting stops or when there’s a vaccine for covid-19. Suffering will not end until Jesus returns. Until Jesus returns, don’t stop lamenting. Until He returns, let’s continue learning how to persevere through pain.

Unlike the rest of the chapters of Lamentations, chapter 5 is not written in an acrostic. This chapter represents the community finally speaking out. And in their voices, we hear Three Prayers to Help Us Persevere Through Pain:

“Lord, Remember!” (v. 1)

The people of Judah begin with a prayer asking God to remember. Notice verse 1: “Remember, O LORD, what has befallen us; look, and see our disgrace!” This request is a minor theme in Lamentations. In 2:1 Jeremiah laments that the Lord “has not remembered” His people. In 3:19 he prays, “Remember my affliction and my wanderings” In 5:20 Judah asks, “Why do you forget us forever?”

But what is it the people of Judah want God to remember? The suffering and disgrace that has befallen the nation, recounted in verses 2-18. They lament the destruction of their land (v. 2), the death of their loved ones (v. 3), widespread poverty (v. 4), fierce enemies and physical exhaustion (v. 5), economic upheaval (v. 6), divine discipline (v. 7), the breakdown of societal structures (v. 8), widespread crime (v. 9), physical pain (v. 10), sexual assault (v. 11), governmental collapse (v. 12), enslavement (v. 13), the loss of young and old (v. 14), the demise of public celebration (v. 15), public humiliation and shame (v. 16), inconsolable sorrow (v. 17), and the desolation of the temple mount (v. 18).

Sometimes we suffer because we sin, like Judah in verse 16. Sometimes we suffer because we’ve been sinned against, like Judah in verse 7. Sometimes it’s a combination of reasons. Sometimes, like Job, we don’t know the reason. But suffering still stings, no matter its source. And it’s right for us to honestly talk to the Lord when we’re suffering, even if that suffering is all or partly deserved. It’s good for you to open your mouth when life hurts.

Why then are so many Christians so notoriously bad at this? Rather than openly, honestly cataloguing our pain, we tend to suppress is. Perhaps we’ve trusted the prosperity preachers more than we realize, buying the lie that the presence of pain is rooted in the absence of faith.

In his book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, Mark Vroegop writes this: “It has been my experience that many Christians are uncomfortable with the tension of the long rehearsing of pain combined with the appeal to God’s grace. We tend to hush the recitation of sorrow. However, restoration doesn’t come to those who live in denial. I wonder what would happen if more Christians confidently walked into the darkest moments of life and guided people in talking to God about their pain.”iiii Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 144. If you’ve learned anything in this series on lament, I hope you realize that it’s good to talk to God about your pain.

But we need more than a private conversation about your pain between you and God. Like Judah, we must learn to talk openly and publicly about our suffering. It shouldn’t be weird or awkward in a prayer meeting or a small group to be brutally honest about how much life hurts. And it shouldn’t be weird or awkward for everyone else to listen while the sufferer prays a prayer of personal lament.

In his book Prophetic Lament, Soong-Chan Rah writes: "Oftentimes, in corporate prayer meetings, we offer prayers on behalf of the suffering; even when an individual is present, that individual remains silent while others pray. The example of Lamentations may be to move those who suffer to exercise the dignity of human agency and become empowered to pray for themselves."iiiiii Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament, A Call for Justice in Troubled Times (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 179. PBC member, if you’re hurting, I encourage you to be open about your suffering this week in your Care Group call. And if you’re ready, I encourage you to lead your group in a prayer of lament, asking the Lord to remember you in your pain.

But why do the people of Judah ask God to remember? Is God absent-minded? Is He distracted? Is He riddled with dementia or short-term memory loss? The Hebrew word “remember” doesn’t always mean to recall the past but to respond in the present. As Steven Smith writes, "When he says, "Remember," he is not asking God to recall something God had forgotten. Rather, he is calling God to act on what he knows."iviv Steven Smith, Christ-Centered Exposition: Exalting Jesus in Jeremiah and Lamentations (Nashville: B&H, 2019), 299. When we call on God to remember we’re asking Him to be faithful to His promises. We’re asking Him to keep His covenant.

Throughout the Scriptures, God’s remembering is connected to His faithfulness to keep His covenant promises. In Genesis 9:15, God promised Noah, “I will remember My covenant that is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” After centuries of slavery, Exodus 2:24 tells us “God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” After delivering His people from Egypt, God promised to forgive their descendants when they repented. Listen to Leviticus 26:45—“But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.”

Until Jesus returns, don’t stop lamenting. Cry out to the Lord and ask Him to remember. When we pray, “Lord Remember,” we’re honestly telling God our pain. We’re asking Him to be faithful to keep His covenant promises to His people. But what about those times when it feels like God hasn’t remembered? This is the how the people of Judah felt in verse 20: “Why do you forget us forever, why do you forsake us for so many days?” When it feels as if our prayers for God to remember go unanswered, we must keep lamenting. There’s a second prayer you must learn to pray if you’re going to persevere through pain . . .

“Lord, You Reign!” (v. 19)

Notice verse 19: “But you, O LORD, reign forever; your throne endures to all generations.” Even though life hurts, the people of Judah are praising God. They’re telling themselves the truth. They’re reminding themselves that suffering doesn’t minimize the sovereignty of God. You’ll never persevere through pain unless you believe that God is still in control when life hurts. Consider what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty over our suffering.

God is sovereign over sickness and disabilities:

Exodus 4:11—Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?

1 Samuel 1:5—But to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the LORD had closed her womb.

God is sovereign over nature:

Job 37:10-13—By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen fast. He loads the thick cloud with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightning. They turn around and around by his guidance, to accomplish all that he commands them on the face of the habitable world. Whether for correction or for his land or for love, he causes it to happen.

Amos 4:7—“I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither.

God is sovereign over the tiniest creatures:

Exodus 23:28—And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you.

Jonah 4:7—But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered.

God is sovereign over kings and rulers:

Isaiah 40:23-24—who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

Proverbs 21:1—The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.

God is sovereign over Satan and his minions:

Job 1:12—And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

Job 2:6—And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life.”

God is sovereign over seemingly random events:

Proverbs 16:33—The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.

God is sovereign over daily events:

Proverbs 16:9—The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.

Proverbs 19:21—Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.

God is sovereign over life and death:

Deuteronomy 32:39—See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

1 Samuel 12:6—The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up.

God is sovereign over all things:

Isaiah 46:10—"My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,”

Ephesians 1:11—In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,

No one can stop God’s sovereignty:

Job 42:2—“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Psalm 115:3—Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.

Proverbs 21:30—No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the LORD.

Isaiah 14:27—For the LORD of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?

This includes the voluntary, sinful decisions of humans:

Genesis 50:20—As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

Act 4:26-28—The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’— for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

The Bible is absolutely clear: God reigns! Even when we’re suffering, God reigns. This is comforting for two reasons. First, it’s comforting because your pain is not outside His control. Margaret Clarkson put it this way: “The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling. The circumstances surrounding our lives are no accident: they may be the work of evil, but that evil is held firmly within the mighty hand of our sovereign God. . . . All evil is subject to Him, and evil cannot touch His children unless He permits it. God is the Lord of human history and of the personal history of every member of His redeemed family.”vv As quoted in Jerry Bridges, Trusting God (Colorado Springs, NavPress, 2008), 28.

Second, God’s sovereignty in our suffering is comforting because if you’re a follower of Jesus you can have confidence that God is using your suffering for your good. This was Joseph’s confidence in Genesis 50:20. It was Job’s confidence when he worshipped God after losing everything. And it was Paul’s confidence in Romans 8:28 where he wrote, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

William Cowper (pronounced cooper) knew what it was to suffer. He was born in 1731 in a small town near London. His mother died at age 6. At a young age he was cruelly mistreated (perhaps even sexually abused) by an older boy. He fell in love at age 18, but his father didn't approve so he never married. After graduating law school, he was offered a government position. He was so terrified of being examined for that position that he attempted suicide. He survived the suicide attempt but was committed to an insane asylum.

Eventually he was released and became friends with a pastor named John Newton, the author of the beloved hymn Amazing Grace. It was through that relationship that Cowper came to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. But his suffering did not end after becoming a Christian. He continued to battle depression and suffered multiple failed suicide attempts. Yet Cowper fought to remind himself that God reigns. Listen to this poem he wrote near the end of his life:

God moves in a mysterious way

his wonders to perform;

he plants his footsteps in the sea,

and rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines

of never-failing skill

he treasures up his bright designs,

and works his sov'reign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;

the clouds ye so much dread

are big with mercy, and shall break

in blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

but trust him for his grace;

behind a frowning providence

he hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,

unfolding ev'ry hour;

the bud may have a bitter taste,

but sweet will be the flow'r.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,

and scan his work in vain;

God is his own interpreter,

and he will make it plain.

When life hurts, don’t stop lamenting. Cry out to the Lord and praise Him because He reigns. When we pray, “Lord, You Reign,” we’re reminding ourselves that God is sovereign in our suffering. But should we just grin and bear it? Should we bow to a fatalistic view of the universe that says, “que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, and there’s nothing we can do about it?” Don’t yield to that type of thinking just yet. There’s a final prayer you must learn to pray if you’re going to persevere through pain . . .

"Lord, Restore!" (v. 21)

Notice verse 21: “Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old.” In these verses, the people of Judah make their bold request: “Lord, restore us!” Genuine lament acknowledges both the pain of life and the power of the Lord. We make bold requests of our Lord because we know He loves us. We ask boldly because we know His steadfast love never ceases, His mercies are new every morning, His faithfulness is great.

These bold requests for God to restore come in all shapes and sizes. Anything that’s wrong with the world is an opportunity to pray for restoration. It’s a prayer for healing from cancer. A prayer to save a marriage on the brink of divorce. A prayer for a vaccine. A prayer for revival. A prayer for relief from unrelenting depression. A prayer for God to remove same sex attraction. A prayer for financial provision. A prayer for employment. A prayer for the unborn to be cherished. A prayer for the evils of abortion to be judged. A prayer for freedom from addiction. A prayer for deliverance for those caught in sex trafficking. A prayer for the homeless. A prayer for riots to end. A prayer for protests to be heard. A prayer for injustices to be remedied. A prayer for change.

But if you look carefully at verse 20, Judah ultimately asks for God to restore a broken people, not merely a broken city. This is a reminder that everything broken on this planet from—riots and racism to cancer and coronavirus—is rooted in our broken relationship with God. The world is broken because we are here. The sin of our first parents has borne bitter fruit.

Some people doubt the existence of God because there’s so much bad in the world. We tell ourselves, “If God was really there and really merciful, He’d eliminate all the evil and hatred in our world.” Here’s the problem: for God to eliminate the evil in the world He’d have to eliminate me. He’d have to eliminate you. It’s God’s mercy that stays His hand.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King Junior, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards restoration.” Don’t stop lamenting because God will restore in the end. Don’t stop praying because God does respond to our prayers of lament now. So your laments can end in a bold decision to trust because you believe the truth about our sovereign, holy, loving, God.

Why then does this book not end in a bold decision to trust? There are no fairytale endings in Lamentations. This song ends in a minor key. Notice verse 22: “unless you have utterly rejected us, and you remain exceedingly angry with us.”

Every major day on the Jewish calendar is ultimately about hope except for one: a day of mourning called Tisha B'Av (tee-shah bah-ahv). It mourns a number of tragedies against the Jewish people, including the destruction of the temple in 586 B.C., and is regarded as the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.

For three weeks leading up to Tisha B’Av, the people begin mourning. They don’t celebrate weddings. They don’t cut their hair or shave. Many don’t eat meat or alcohol. On the final evening, the people gather in synagogues and read the book of Lamentations by candlelight. The people sit in silence until the leader gets to verse 21, when they join him in reciting loudly “Restore us, O Lord!” The leader responds by reading verse 22. But instead of ending the book on a minor key, the people commit what one author calls a “liturgical scandal” by reciting verse 21 again.vivi Moshe Halbertal, “Eikhah and the Stance of Lamentation” in Lament in Jewish Thought: Philosophical, Theological, and Literary Perspectives, Edited by Ilit Ferber and Paula Schwebel (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 9-10.

Rather than altering the ending of Lamentations, we should strive to understand why it ends on a minor key. I believe it’s because it’s not the end of the story. A few days ago we were talking to our kids about how the best stories end with the defeat of evil and the triumph of good. Jonah asked us, “what about Avengers: Infinity War? Evil doesn’t win! Does that make it a bad story?” To which I responded that the ending of that film wasn’t the end of the story. So too with Lamentations. This book ends on a minor key, but it’s not the end!

A few decades before the temple was destroyed, Jeremiah told God’s people how this story would end. He wrote this in

Jeremiah 31:31-34—“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Remember everything we said about God’s covenants earlier? He made covenants with Adam and Eve, with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, and with David. But now a New Covenant was coming. God would write His law on the hearts of His people. God would be personally known by all His New Covenant people. In this New Covenant, God would forever deal with the problem of sin. But the book of Lamentations ends with that covenant still on the horizon.

For over six hundred years God’s people waited for that covenant. Until one night in Jerusalem, a humble Jewish carpenter’s son would sit in an upper room with His disciples. After celebrating the Passover meal together, Jesus took a piece of bread and thanked God the Father. Then He broke the bread into smaller pieces and gave it to each of His disciples while telling them, “This is my body, which is given for you. Eat this in remembrance of me.” After they ate the bread, He took a cup of wine and told them to drink it. “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Plagues have come and gone, empires have risen and fallen, but two thousand years later, Christians still celebrate this New Covenant by taking bread and wine.

COMMUNION

We often say that the communion meal should involve a look in five directions. First, we should look upward. The communion meal is a meal for God’s people. It’s for New Covenant people, for those who have repented of their sins and trusted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you haven’t done that, please don’t take the bread and the cup. Instead of taking bread and cup, we invite you to take Jesus. To receive Him by faith today and then celebrate this meal with us the next time we take it together. If you have done that, but you didn’t get a cup when you came in, hold your hand up and we’ll bring one to you.

Second, we should look inward. The Bible calls us to examine ourselves before we take the cup. In just a moment we’re going to have a moment of silence to examine ourselves. 1 Corinthians 11:27-30 says, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. Notice we should examine ourselves seriously. Judgment befalls those who don’t. But notice also what Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “Communion is just too risky. Better to avoid it altogether!” NO! He commands us to eat and drink! How precious must this meal be if even the peril of judgment should not deter us from partaking. Let’s take a moment now and examine ourselves as Cliff plays.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

God of all good,

We bless You for this means of grace;

Teach us to see in them Your loving purposes

and the joy and strength of our souls.

You have prepared for us a feat;

and though we are unworthy to sit down as Your guests,

we wholly rest on the merits of Jesus,

and hide ourselves beneath His righteousness;

When we hear His tender invitation

and see His wondrous grace,

we cannot hesitate, but must come to You in love.

By Your Spirit enliven our faith rightly to discern

and spiritually to apprehend the Savior.

While we look upon these reminders of our Savior’s death,

may we ponder why He died, and hear Him say,

‘I gave my life to purchase yours,

presented Myself an offering to expiate your sin,

shed My blood to blot out your guilt,

opened My side to make you clean,

endured your curses to set you free

bore your condemnation to satisfy divine justice.’

O may we rightly grasp the breadth and length and height and depth of this love,

In Jesus’ name, Amen.viivii Adapted from a prayer quoted in Feasting With Christ: Meditations on the Lord’s Supper, Edited by Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley (Darlington, England: EP Books, 2012), 123.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Next, we should look outward. Listen again to 1 Corinthians 11:29, “anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” I believe “the body” Paul is talking about in verse 29 is the church. We eat the bread and the cup while thinking of one another. Before we eat, I want you to look around the room. It’s okay to lament the fact that many family members are not yet able to gather with us. We ought to long for the day when we are together, and we ought to look for ways to care for one another while we’re apart.

Fourth, we should look backward. As we take the bread and the cup, we remember what they represent. Prepare to take the bread as I read 1 Corinthians 11:23-24—“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Take and eat. Now prepare to take the cup as I read 1 Corinthians 11:25—“In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” Take and drink.

Finally, we should look forward. There’s a very real sense in which the language of lament is woven into the communion meal itself. 1 Corinthians 11:26 tells us “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” We’re still taking communion in 2020 because Jesus hasn’t returned yet. Every time we take it we long for His return. Every time we take it we’re reminded that the world is still broken, and that life still hurts. When life hurts, don’t stop lamenting.

CLOSING CHORUS

I need thee, O I need thee;

every hour I need thee!

O bless me now, my Savior,

I come to thee.

BENEDICTION

Ephesians 3:20-21—Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

ENDNOTES

________________________

i Nicolas Worlterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), loc. 127 of 562, Kindle.

ii Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 144.

iii Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament, A Call for Justice in Troubled Times (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 179.

iv Steven Smith, Christ-Centered Exposition: Exalting Jesus in Jeremiah and Lamentations (Nashville: B&H, 2019), 299.

v As quoted in Jerry Bridges, Trusting God (Colorado Springs, NavPress, 2008), 28.

vi Moshe Halbertal, “Eikhah and the Stance of Lamentation” in Lament in Jewish Thought: Philosophical, Theological, and Literary Perspectives, Edited by Ilit Ferber and Paula Schwebel (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 9-10.

vii Adapted from a prayer quoted in Feasting With Christ: Meditations on the Lord’s Supper, Edited by Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley (Darlington, England: EP Books, 2012), 123.

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