Jubilee: Good Grief (Esther 4:1-16)

Have you ever found yourself in that kind of situation - things were different, unexpected, uncomfortable…and within minutes you knew that you didn’t want to be there anymore?

We steer clear of what makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes we need to heed that instinct, but other times, we’re uncomfortable because we’re having to deal with someone else’s grief and pain.  

Laments are prayers, born out of suffering, born out of need. A lament is a cry of pain that comes from a deep place, when we’re so raw that honesty and vulnerability pour out of us like a tormented wail - a wail that says things are not as they should be, a wail begging God to engage and end the suffering. We don’t merely speak laments, we feel them in our bodies - the scratch of burlap, the discomfort of ashes. 

Lament has the power to shake us awake, out of our comfortable palaces. Lament reorients us and transforms us, so that we’re listening to the pain of our world and the suffering of another. I wonder if we can each allow ourselves to hear even just one lament. Esther heard one person, and Mordecai’s cry helped reorient her to the people who were hurting just outside her palace walls.