In Luke 13, Jesus looks over Jerusalem and laments. He laments the ways the people had not recognized or listened to the prophets and messengers of God that had been in their midst. It is a message of grief, anger, sadness, disappointment. But a lament is also looking to something that one hopes for - in this case that the people would recognize who is now in their midst.
Same day I read this passage, I was listening to one of Rob Bell’s recent podcasts which was an [interview with a woman named Shelby Forsythia](https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-a89fq-c6ee4b) about grief. Ms Forsythia does a lot of grief work that was rooted in her own experience of grief when her mother died. She shared of how we do not have places in our society today for grief, lamenting, and crying out. She shared how she found herself in car in the garage with the doors shut on a cold night in Chicago just yelling at the top of her lungs in grief and lament. She wasn’t crying out to anyone or anything specific, but just crying out with every fiber of her being.
But she is so right - we need those places to allow what is grieving and hurting in us to be let out. When we are in the places of darkness, when we are closed in a car in a garage on a cold Chicago night, when we are dealing with a scary diagnosis, when we are angry at the state of the world, sometimes we need a place that what is inside can be let out. So I am grateful for Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem today. I am grateful for Ms Forsythia and her words to speak this necessary truth. And I am so grateful for the many in my life who have made space for the times when I have needed to cry out. And I am grateful for the God who is there to hear it and receive it all.
