Day 7 of 30
Screaming Psalms
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.”
Psalm 22:1-2 — KJV
This is the prayer Jesus quoted from the cross. That alone should tell us something. The most forsaken moment in human history — God incarnate, dying, God-breathed — and what comes to His lips is a psalm of absolute desolation. Not a tidy closing prayer. A scream.
The psalms of lament are among the most theologically significant texts in Scripture, and they are almost entirely absent from our worship and our prayer lives. We know how to sing about victory. We are uncomfortable singing about bewilderment. And so when our own bewilderment arrives — and it does, for everyone — we have no language for it, no tradition of honest suffering to inhabit.
But the psalms give it to us. They model a way of being with God that is not performance. Psalm 22 does not begin with resolution. It begins with roaring. It begins with a man who feels abandoned and says so, directly, to the God he feels abandoned by. And this is the miracle: he still says it to God. 'My God, my God.' Even in the cry of forsakenness, the connection holds.
Lament is not faithlessness. It is faith talking honestly in the dark. It is the conviction that God can be addressed — even accused — because He is real enough to hear it. The alternative is silence, and silence has a way of calcifying into bitterness.
If today is a screaming-psalm day for you, scream the psalm. God is not surprised. He has heard every one of them. He will hear yours too.
Peace Challenge
Peace Challenge: Read Psalm 22 in full today — all the way to the end. Notice where it travels. Allow yourself to feel whatever comes up as you read it, without managing the emotion.
Today’s Prayer
My God, there are days when you feel far away. Days when I cry out and hear nothing back. I choose to believe you are still there, even when I cannot feel you. Like the psalmist, I bring my roaring to you — not because I have it together, but because you are the only one I can bring it to. Hear me. Hold me. Even this. Amen.
Journal Prompt
“Is there grief, anger, or confusion you have been keeping out of your prayers because it felt too extreme to bring to God? What would it mean to bring it anyway?”
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