Roughly a third of the Psalms are laments. Count what your church sang last month and the proportion will almost certainly be nothing like that. The gap between those two numbers is one of the quietest problems in modern worship, and it is not a taste problem — it leaves people without words on the days they need them most.
What a lament actually is
A lament is not a sad song. Sad songs are about a feeling; a lament is a form, and it usually has parts:
- An address. It is spoken to God, not about Him. “O LORD, God of my salvation” (Psalm 88:1).
- The complaint, said plainly. “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1).
- A request. “Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes” (13:3).
- Usually, a turn. “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation” (13:5).
That structure is the whole argument. A lament is an act of faith performed in the grammar of complaint — you do not argue with someone you have stopped believing is there.
The turn is real, and it is not a rule
Most laments turn. Psalm 13 turns in four verses. Psalm 22 starts at “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and ends in a congregation praising.
But Psalm 88 does not turn. It ends: “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness” (88:18). No resolution, no pivot, no closing praise.
And it was kept, given a tune and a choirmaster, and bound into the hymnal. Someone decided a worshipping community needed one song that does not get better by the end — because some weeks do not, and a book that pretended otherwise would be useless in exactly those weeks.
Jesus quotes one from the cross
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) is Psalm 22:1. At the moment of greatest suffering in the Christian story, He does not compose something new. He reaches for the songbook and uses a lament.
Two things follow from that. Lament is not a failure of faith, or He would not be using one. And the words were there when He needed them, because someone had written them down centuries earlier and a community had kept singing them.
That is the practical function of a hymnal. It puts language in your mouth before the day you cannot form any.
Why we stopped
Not from bad motives, mostly. A Sunday gathering is meant to encourage. Songs get chosen for how a room will feel. Sung complaint is hard to lead and harder to end well, and there is a real fear of a service that leaves people worse off.
But the cost is specific and it lands on specific people. If someone comes in carrying something unbearable and every song assumes resolution, the room has told them, without meaning to, that their week is not admissible here. They will usually conclude the problem is them.
Lament in a service does the opposite. It says: this is a place where that can be said out loud, to God, in company.
What it is not
Lament is not cynicism, which addresses no one. It is not despair, which stops speaking. And it is not permission to stay put — the psalmists complain toward God, at volume, and keep asking.
It is also not the same as pretending. Psalm 42 has the writer talking to himself: “Why are you cast down, O my soul… Hope in God” (42:5). He is not denying the state he is in. He is telling himself the truth inside it.
Writing one
I am trying to make sure this is in what I write. Redemption & Faith is one story in order, and a redemption story that skipped the middle would be a lie about how redemption works — nobody experiences it as a highlight reel. One of the songs is called “Prayers I Didn’t Pray”, and it exists because of this.
If you are in the middle of a long wait, this is what Scripture says is happening, and this is the promise underneath it. The singles are here.