learning to lament

Jesus, why is it so hard for me to carry your name?  God, my vision is so clouded by the film the world wants to paint over everything.  Your glory has been reduces to the feeble attempts at describing or describing away who you are.  We keep building towers of Babel and then celebrating in the climax of our confusion.  So many, God? So many are lost and believing this construction of false truth that we've made for and from ourselves, or that we've swallowed, begged, borrowed from generations before?
If grace is an ocean, we're sinking, but the avalanche of self-worship keeps plunging into the sea - it won't ever fill it but it still keeps coming - no one learning from before...
I know.  I know the ocean's not big enough to describe your grace.  I know, even, that the avalanche can't compare to how far we've fallen... but somehow the spring comes after every//single//winter... right, God?  The mountains move, the lame walk, the blind see, the dead rise... right, God?  You are a God of miracles. Of turning Babel on its knees, of extending the kingdom to the sinner on the cross by your side, of loving the tyrant, the rebel, the arrogant, the one who gets himself lost on purpose.  
But sometimes they don't come.  Sometimes the daughter they've seen grow up and cling to you just doesn't seem to be enough.  The friend who's loved them believes truth that's only for her.  The sister's example of 'religion' is just a drop in the bucket in a sea of hypocrisy, her earnest prayer seems not to be heard.  The husband that left has caused too deep a scar, the years of a misfed philosophy are too deeply ingrained.  
And the hope that I claim, the one I live by, has only been a shade of the truth.  I'm only standing ankle deep in that sea of grace - my body still whipped by the wind and the sun and the views of Babel towers on the shore - though not for lack of your invitation.  God, I want to swim.  Bring me in, deeper = may I not stop at my knees, my waist, my neck. But God, will they come?  Will they even come as far as their ankles?  Maybe they'll never come if they're not called by someone swimming.  So teach me to swim, Father.  Teach me to swim by drawing me in - may I not fear, may I not forget those on the shore, but may I jump in to the truth of your grace, your sacrifice, your salvation, your arms.  Catch me, Daddy, I want to jump in.


Matt (my worship pastor from home) spoke about the Psalmist's lament on Sunday, and that day, it didn't quite resonate... but yesterday, quite unexpectedly, I got it while I journaled and wrote this.  He said that a lament is different from grumbling or complaining, because a lament still places focus on God, and ends in giving him glory.  He cares deeply about our thoughts, and yet, we must see that all of our confusion and fear ultimately ends with Him, at the foot of the cross.