Lament

A Service of Lament at the FMHF Retreat

Comments BY: NORMAN WETTERAU, M.D. - FMHF PRESIDENT
Service By: Dr. Wayne McCown

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

After the presentations and discussions on Lament, Wayne McCown lead a brief service of lament. It was based on Psalm 13. For those who attended, spend some time going over this in a prayerful way. That time with God may be more useful than all the things we can write. If you were not able to attend, read and pray through this. It can be a retreat of Lament with God and lead by the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 13 (NIV), a Psalm of Lament
For the director of music. A psalm of David.

Turning to the LORD with Your Complaint

1 . How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2. How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Bolding Asking the LORD for an Answer:

3. Look on me and answer, LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, 4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

Placing Full Trust in the LORD

5. BUT I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing the LORD's praise, for he has been good to me.

After you have read and prayed through this psalm, read Wayne McCown’s comments below and repeat your prayers and readings.

Introductory comments on Psalm 13

Psalms of Lament (over 50)

  • Most have a similar pattern, as represented here

  • 1st step = Turning to God, often/typically voicing hard questions such as Why? and/or How long?

    • Here, no less than 4x he says, “How long?”

    • Simply voicing it does not evoke an answer.

    • Addressing it to God does: “How long, LORD?”

    • Lament = turning to the LORD with the hard questions of theology and life.

    • Beyond the pandemic, where else in your life are you pleading with the LORD: “How long?” What are some of your “unanswered” prayers?

  • 2nd step = Bolding presenting to God your specific personal struggle

    • What “enemy” or “foe” are you facing today?

    • Physical, mental, psychological or spiritual condition; anxiety, fear, depression?

    • Address it to the LORD and ask for his help.

  • 3rd step = Turn away from yourself (and your limited resources) and turn back to the LORD

    • Put your trust – fully – in him.

    • Typical of Lament: conclude with a reaffirmation of faith, introduced by “but” or “yet”

    • In your time of reading this and prayer, Walk through the sequence of steps together.

  • Comments by Dr. Wetterau: The evangelical church likes to be positive and triumphant.

    • People have not often shared unanswered prayers or failures. Covid has changed this. We in the health care professions see sickness and apparent failures. Many of us have said Psalm 13, and other psalms of lament but I often do not spend time to really pray through the psalm and through the issues that bother me. In this time of covid and national depression, call on your Christian friends and small groups to share their concerns and lament. The medical profession is very concerned with all the covid depression, the increase in drug overdoses and suicides (deaths of despair). Our churches need to be equally if not more concerned. People are looking for answers. Psalm 13 and others have some answers if we can spend the time to pray and allow God to show himself. The answers will not be found in one sermon or in our back pockets.

Fall Retreat – Improving Practice Through Emotional Intelligence and Lament

BY: Susanne Mohnkern - FMHF Board Member

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Have you ever been in a situation where emotions got out of control and you wished you had been able to handle it better? Attendees at this fall’s FMHF retreat were able to reflect on just such a situation and learn more about emotions and the related topic of lament. After careful deliberation, the Fall 2021 Retreat was moved to a fully online event on Sat. September 18th The Rev. Larry L. Lyons, Manager of Spiritual Care Trinity Health System in Livonia MI, provided those in attendance with two seminars - Emotional Intelligence: Patient-Centered Care and Lament: A Journey in Resilience. In his role as hospital chaplain over the past 18 months, Rev. Lyons has been privileged and challenged to work in some of the most extreme conditions seen in the past 100 years in health care as the nation dealt with the global pandemic that strained hospital capacity and exhausted health care providers at all levels.

Emotional Intelligence: Patient-Centered Care - Rev. Lyons provided an overview of emotional intelligence (EI) from Ted. A. James, MD, MHCM at Harvard Medical School. EI consists of self-awareness (knowing your emotions, strengths, weaknesses), self-management (the ability to stay calm when emotions are running high), empathy (identifying with & understanding others); social skills (managing relationships). As such, EI helps individuals outperform those with only high IQ leading to better clinical outcomes via improved communication & teamwork, ability to respond well under pressure, increased empathy, better quality of care & career satisfaction. Chaplain Larry added that EI helps one to recognize the emotion within those for whom we care. He suggested that with increased emotion, the caregiver needs to slow down, recognize the emotion in the room, and perhaps take an emotional time out. Physicians and nurses are striving for positive patient experiences with good patient satisfaction ratings. “Being there” and taking time to sit down and listen are important to patients. Larry quoted a study from the University of Kansas where seated visits took statistically no longer than standing visits but the patient perceived the seated encounters as being almost 2 minutes longer (statistically significant). The related topic of spiritual care during the healthcare encounter was also discussed. According to a multi-site study, a substantial minority of patients desire spiritual interaction in a routine office visit. In the hospital setting, when patients are presumably more severely ill, addressing spiritual & emotional issues is one of the most important parts of care. Since nurses are with the patient and family after the M.D. leaves the room, they play a critical role in provision of spiritual care. A breakout session with small groups helped attendees have a more in-depth discussion. Many practical suggestions offered were thought-provoking and helped practitioners imagine incorporating them in future patient encounters.

Lament: A Journey in Resilience - Continuing with the theme of how our emotions affect our practice, lament was defined for us as a passionate expression of grief/sorrow often expressed in a physical manner. Although painful, lament is essential to psychological health and is often the main pathway to personal growth, compassion, and wisdom. Rev. Larry shared some insights from the Book of Lamentations including how this literary work is a compelling testament to the resilience of the human spirit’s will to live. What followed was a look at the topics of: 1. models of biblical lament; 2. recovery of biblical lament; 3. biblical response to grief and pain is not denial; 4. experiencing lament in not spiritual weakness; 5. feeling distant from God in the midst of lament; 6. the possibility that feelings expressed during lament may not seem very spiritual (e.g. Psl. 13 where King David yelled at God); 7. we can completely trust God and engage in lament; and 8. honest pain turns to honest trust. Honest biblical lament will bring healing and resilience, unity to the church, point us to Jesus/Comforter/Father and move us to action. Attendees were encouraged to question why the Holy Spirit is called the comforter if we were not intended to grieve. With the emphasis on praise and worship, is there space for lament in our churches today? How can increasing our own EI bring healing and comfort to those we encounter? Throughout both seminars, Chaplain Larry used illustrations from his practice to facilitate our understanding of EI and lament. We thank Chaplain Larry for sharing with us such important topics pertinent to our world and our practice as we continue to navigate a global pandemic and healthcare worker shortage.

Civil War in Congo and Ethiopia: Lament and Pray

By: Tim Kratzer, M.D.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo tribal conflict resulted in a civil war from the late 1990s up to 2006 with the loss of more lives than in any war since WW II. Free Methodists were at the center of the slaughter yet how many of us did not even know about it. When things are very bad it is not too bad to pray. God does not call us to forget it but to lament. Indeed, we did help and with some help, our hospital in Congo remained open. There is still trouble in parts of the Congo, but God is answering prayer. UN troops are there now but these troops cannot extinguish hatred. In Rwanda and Burundi, there were major efforts by churches and outside agencies to bring about forgiveness and peace. When I was teaching mental health at Hope Africa University, I saw what had been happening. Some of the students watched as their parents were killed yet they forgave those who were responsible. God can heal and abolish hatred, even in regions of the Congo where tribalism continues.

But now we have a new civil war, in Ethiopia and since Ethiopia. The war is between Tigray prominence and the central government. Although the central government was reported to have defeated the Tigray rebels, that may not be the case and many killings continue.

Ethiopia’s Civil War Is a Disaster That’s Only Getting Worse
Bloomberg Opinion, August 31, 2021

There may be terrible famine. Aid cannot get to those in need. Farmers cannot plant their crops and animals are dilled. Again, this is too horrible to think about. We have enough problems of our own, but these are God’s people, even if they are destroying each other and themselves. Many are Christians. Again, we need to lament and call our churches to pray.

Would it be too much to pray for these nations each Sunday for the rest of the year or pray once a month with a progress report? (Check BBC and African news.) And yes, our churches there need money but let’s start with real lament and prayer. The problems are beyond money, beyond the UN and at this point, they seem to be even beyond our churches but they are not beyond God.

Praying for Haiti After Another Deadly Earthquake

BY: NORMAN WETTERAU, M.D. - FMHF PRESIDENT

Haiti: Ten years ago, Haiti had a terrible earthquake. In 2021 the president was assassinated, and the government is unstable. There is a covid epidemic.  Then there is another major earthquake. The government seems incapable of helping its people. Even outside relief agencies are having trouble getting help to where it is needed. How can God allow one country to suffer so much? Many Free Methodists are giving money to help.  We wonder what our Church leaders in Haiti are thinking

How to Pray for Haiti After Another Deadly Earthquake
Christian leaders in Haiti share what is different for believers between 2010 and now, as death toll passes 1,900.
[From Christianity Today]

Christianity Today had an interesting article, which is worth reading (see link above). They point out that the repeated damage was partially due to the earthquake, partially due to the poor government, and partly due to an attitude of hopelessness. Lament and hopelessness are not the same. After the last earthquake, people asked why buildings were not built in a way to help them not collapse in an earthquake. After the large quake ten years ago, building codes were developed but ignored, even by churches. Pastors in Haiti point out that nothing changed and that if larger buildings had been built to code, the loss of life would have been less. Of course, corruption is part of the reason. Corruption causes nations to stay in poverty and prevents change. But rather than complain and blame, we need to lament corruption and ask God to raise up national Christians to challenge the norm such as the pastors who are quoted in this article.

The article is an interesting discussion of political and theological issues that help make Haiti unable to change or even usefully use aid. There is much lament but not hopelessness. God is at work and Christians in Haiti and outside or trying to help. Various pastors for Haiti are quoted and the article gives lists of specific things to pray for concerning Haiti. Share this with your church (as well as what is happening in Africa). Many times, we do not want to know because we do not know what to do, but we are called to prayer and lament. We are not to look away or be too busy but as we lament and pray, and even give, we realize how seemly hopeless the problems are in Haiti yet we are called to lament and pray, not ignore and pray. Over the years God has does some great things through our mission efforts and the efforts of the local church. People have given and have prayed, let’s continue. Share the link to the Christianity Today article with others after you read it.

Another viewpoint:

Churches In Haiti Lie In Ruins After The Earthquake But Still Try To Comfort And Help
NPR News (April 30)

This news reports the destruction of catholic churches but then points out how much the churches do for the people. For many they receive their education in church-run schools, and churches supply food and much help to many, all things that the government seems unable to do. Protestant churches were included, and the report shows that despite all the troubles, God is still at work through churches in Haiti. Destruction of the buildings do not change that. This report in a secular news outlet makes me feel very good as a Christian. Keep praying and keep helping.

Lament: For the Coronavirus and Beyond

BY: NORMAN WETTERAU, M.D. - FMHF PRESIDENT

Our churches could not meet in person. Our friends and relatives have been ill, and some have died. We have been isolated.  For many American Christians, we have been in a state of sadness and lament over the coronavirus. Some have also been sad because of our political situation.  Both sides are upset at our inability to agree on solutions to our national problems. Finally, our national life expectancy has decreased by two years even before coronavirus due to drug-related deaths and suicide. These are deaths of despair. Christians need to lament, turning the issues over to God and seeking his help and wisdom, and asking him to take away our anger and hopelessness.

This is not something we are good at. Soong-Chan Rah in his IV Press book on Lamentations, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times, points out that many evangelical churches focus on celebration and triumphalism. He is critical of this as expressed in some white suburban evangelical churches, especially large prosperous ones. He calls on us to look at the inner city, the poor rural areas, and our overseas church and lament, not just for them but for ourselves. Revival will come through lament and honest repentance, rather than through great programs, celebration, and triumphalism.

We will explore lament at our fall annual conference which will be virtual on Saturday, September 18.  In making the decision to hold this virtual, rather than meeting in person, our board experienced sadness and lament. Let us come together on zoom and explore this together with our speaker, Chaplain Larry Lyons.  His first session, starting at 9:30, will be a follow-up of his talk at our virtual retreat last year. This pandemic on other social issues has gone on and on. How are we to react, not just to the disease but to what our different opinions are doing to families and churches. Where is God in all of this?

His second session will be on emotional intelligence and creating the patient experience. How do we as healthcare professionals build empathic skills and create emotional support? We may be in lament but many of those who are hurting look to us for help, whether the problem is coronavirus itself, unemployment, or the death of a family member from alcohol or a drug overdose. We then have the opportunity to meet one another virtually in two one-hour chat sessions, giving an opportunity to reflect, listen and share. After these two sessions, Pastor Wayne McCown will lead a 30-minute devotional. The meeting will be kept open for all of us to socialize and share what has been happening in our lives.

But our problems at home are not the only problems. As I have been reading about what has been happening in Haiti, Ethiopia, and the Congo, I have been brought to tears. These human realities make our problems seem small. Are we aware?  Do we and our churches pray for these countries? The problems are beyond human solution, but we have Free Methodists in all these countries. We cannot forget them. Mathew 25 calls on us to help those in need. I am afraid that some American Christians not only have no interest in helping but do not even want to know what is happening.   Even if we cannot solve these problems, we need to call our friends and churches to pray.

At the last General Conference Bishop Lubunga from the Congo attended. He is Bishop of one of the largest Free Methodist Conferences, not one of the poorest but the very poorest country in the world and a country that is still in tribal conflict, a continuation of the civil war that took the lives of 5 million people 20 years ago. At general conference, the Bishop was introduced and there was a prayer for Congo. It was an important moment for our General Conference and for Congo. Let us speak out in our churches, conference, and even at a general conference if that is necessary. We must know what is happening, lament and pray. Nothing is too horrible to pray about.

Join us for our virtual conference but also join us for lament and prayer for what has been happening.  We cannot change all of this but God can and maybe God will even use us to help.

Lamenting and Rejoicing at the Same Time

Many of us receive Word and Deed e-mails from the medical group in Burundi. Eric McLaughlin, who spoke at our retreat in 2018 (see our Dec 2018 newsletter), wrote a recent post which I felt was very appropriate for this time in our nation. He has granted permission to reprint it here.

In addition, the book which he talked about publishing is now available at Amazon: Promises in the Dark: Walking with Those in Need Without Losing Heart

Those of us who attended the 2018 retreat will want to read more about the subject and those who were not able to attend should even more order it. This short piece from Word and Deed is a sample of the wisdom and vision God has given him. As we pray for our own country in this epidemic, pray also for Burundi, and the rest of Africa. This virus could be even more devastating there.

By: Eric McLaughlin, M.D.
Original Post

We are living in a time of loss.  And so are you, fellow inhabitant of planet Earth.  This season is not what anyone predicted.  We cannot go where we thought we could go.  We cannot do what we thought we were doing.  We cannot be with those whom we thought to spend time.  We do not know when things will change, which makes any significant planning nearly impossible.  Early February has this amazing nostalgia.  The glory of that ordinary life - we knew it not.  May we know it better when it returns.

Watching people all over the world grapple with this time of loss has shown me two seemingly contradictory responses:

First, there is an increased call for the importance of lament.  Articles such as NT Wright’s and different books (including my own) have been sources of resonance for a lot of people.  Lament is indeed a gift to us in times like our own.  We don’t have answers, and we don’t know yet when answers will be forthcoming.  Our normal means of decision-making and anxiety-mitigation have been stripped from us by the utterly unprecedented nature of the global COVID- 19 pandemic.  We don’t know what to do.

Here, lament gives us the words and even the emotional stance that we need.  We cry out to God.  We pour out our complaint.  We ask “How long?” as more than a rhetorical question.  We don’t understand, but can at least know to whom our complaint is rightly addressed.  We do better to take the ugliest thought to God than the most cleaned-up thought anywhere else.  “We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”  (2 Chronicles 20:12)

The second response is one of celebration and beauty.  As our normal life becomes restricted, and in many places slows down, there is a need to find some form of celebration.  People write notes to each other.  You may have seen more longtime friends on Zoom in the past couple of weeks than you have in years.  Yesterday, my wife walked through our house loudly singing Les Miserables tunes (“One day more!”) and the kids joined in.  The joy and the beauty are a defiance of the fear and the darkness, and this is as it should be.

I have loved watching the art and the music that Covid sequestration has already birthed.  My med school classmates are posting brilliant dual-piano pieces that they are playing together despite being a time zone apart.  Our team intern’s watercolors of a beautiful JRR Tolkien quote are circulating on social media.  I can’t remember when the beauty of American spring was so celebrated in photos.  The human creative spirit inside all of us, which is part of humanity’s role as image bearers of a creative God, has hardly ever been so evident.  We need this.

So we find that we need to lament this loss.  And we find that we need to fill the void of this loss with a celebration of beauty.  And it feels impossible to do both of these together.  Give me one or the other, and some kind of path is laid before me.  But both?  I can feel my feet sticking to the ground.

Lament for Congo

By: NORMAN WETTERAU, M.D. - FMHF PRESIDENT

Missions, medical care, church growth, a Nobel peace prize, and now lament as there is renewed civil war. Several of our members including board member Tim Kratzer and former board member Linda Stryker were involved in the medical work in Congo in the 1980s.

Deaconess Nundu Hospital was established in the South Kivu Province of Eastern Congo and a system of rural health centers was developed. A nursing school was established to staff these clinics. Along with these medical facilities, numerous churches were planted and schools established.  It was a time to praise the Lord for the work there. Members of the Free Methodist Medical Fellowship, as it was known then, were involved in this medical work in the Congo as well as work in Rwanda, Burundi, Haiti, and other countries.

Now our time of praise has turned to mourning. In several of these countries civil war broke out. The war in Congo appears to be the longest and most deadly with over 5 million people dying since 1995. This is more people than in other well-known wars including Cambodia, Syria, and Rwanda. What is worse is that this war seems to go on and on, over 25 years now. Hundreds of thousands have also fled as refugees and some have been resettled in the US. Free Methodist Churches of Congolese refugees dot our nation and add vitality to the United States Free Methodist Church, but the praise and vitality of these churches belie the fact that war and conflict continue in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Civil unrest has persisted and accelerated in intensity over the past year on the plateau region west of Deaconess Nundu Hospital. This situation is very critical and the Free Methodist Church has been severely impacted. More than 80% of the villages where the FMC has churches have been destroyed. Hundreds of people have lost their lives. The conflict is ongoing with fighting reported around Minembwe, the principle town in the area. More than 35,000 have fled the area for Uvira to the north and Baraka to the south and even to neighboring countries. It is reported that 40,000 people are concentrated in Minembwe, posing a humanitarian crisis with lack of shelter, food and clothing. The Bishops Famine and Relief Fund has assisted these internally displaced people, but has not yet gotten to those who have fled to Minembwe. More assistance is needed.  

In November, several congregations in the Rochester, NY area gathered in a Lament for Congo Service. As doctors, we try to fix things and so we have been attempting to help through support of Deaconess Nundu Hospital.  Those that gathered in Rochester are encouraged by these efforts. Susan Uwiringiyimana, a Free Methodist who fled this region of the DRC almost twenty years ago, was also at that service. She works with displaced women in the Congo.  Dr. Wetterau represented Champions for Congo and the Free Methodist Healthcare Fellowship. But the service was about lament. We need to start with prayer and call on God to act. The various plans for peace, whether brokered by the UN, the government or even the Free Methodist Church have not worked. We need to cry out and this service was a time to do that. The service began with songs of praise to God by everyone and then by an African refugee choir. Following the singing there was a time of remembering the good things of the Congo, the establishment of the church in 1963 and the tremendous growth of the church. God has been and still is working there. God will do more.

There was then confession. One person from the Congo began to recite portions of Romans. I do what I do not want to do. I am against what is happening but then I do it. He went over and over that as a confessional and helping all to realize that there are Christians from different tribes who feel what is happing is terrible yet end up participating in it. How is that possible? Paul made it clear in Romans that it is possible and we need to confess and repent. We need to beg God to help us change and help the whole country to change. This confession then moved to general confession, repentance, and lament

Scriptures of lament were read including Psalm 90. The service ended with communion. Jesus died at the hands of men, but unlike the refugees who have lost their lives, he died for the sins of humankind, people from every nation. And he was resurrected as clear evidence that God has overcome evil. We ask God to come and walk with us but in communion we join with Jesus at the table of death, forgiveness, and healing.

Many of us have been trying to solve the problem through our giving of financial resources to provide medical care or to help refugees. We need to continue to give, but let us also fall on our knees, weep, and repent. As we join with the refugees in lament, God will guide us in the ways that we can join in assisting those who are suffering with both our prayers and gifts. Can those of us who are not from the Congo and are not refugees really appreciate how good our own situation is? Can we join with those who weep? As we do that God will visit us and walk with us.