Writing for His Glory is a series of reflections and writing prompts drawn from a writers’ workshop I teach for high school students. God spoke all of creation into existence His Word; as He made us in His image, we can glorify Him with our own. My prayer is that these reflections prompt you to wonder, praise, and pick up your pen.
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” the Preacher tells us, “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” (Eccl. 3:1,4) Writings of praise and lamentation reflect these two types of seasons, and encourage us to seek God in all circumstances – whether weeping or laughter mark our days.
Psalms of praise and lamentation are two sides of the same coin. Both model a personal relationship with God. Both reflect upon his character to frame and process moments in life. Praise flows from gratitude to God for who he is, and lamentation – prayers in the midst of grief and suffering – reflects our reliance upon him. As Mark Vroegop writes in Deep Clouds, Dark Mercy:
Pain has a way of awakening us to our need for God’s help. It shines a spotlight on our powerlessness to control everything. We are never more aware of our frailty than when hardship comes our way. This is one of the blessings of suffering if we allow lament to lead us. The various trials of life can become a platform to reaffirm our dependence upon the Lord. The requests of lament can become the place where we celebrate our need for God’s help.”
Read the following Psalms of lament and praise, and note what patterns emerge:
- Praise:
- Psalm 100
- Psalm 146
- Psalm 150
- Psalm 23
- Lament:
- Psalm 130
- Psalm 6
- Psalm 38
- Psalm 22
We need not lament or praise God through poetry and song only. Saints over the years have taken to prose for the same purposes. Consider these two readings:
Trusting and Praising God in Extremity by William Bradford (1590-1657)
Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they [the Pilgrims] fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. . . . Having thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation, they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies; no houses or much less town to repair to, to seek for help. . . . The season was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search to unknown coast. . . .
For whatever way they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens), they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. . . .Let it also be considered what weak hopes of supply and help they left behind them, that might bear up their minds in this sad condition and trials they were under; and they could not but be very small. . . .
What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: “Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity.” Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is Good, and His mercies endure forever!
All Things Shall Be Well by Julian of Norwich (1343-1416)
In my darkness, crying to God, the light came first as by a soft general dawning of comfort for faith. “Sin is inevitable [in a fallen world], but all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” But I thought, “Ah good Lord, how might all be well, in view of the great hurt that is come by sin to the creature?”
The answer. . . is that . .. grace works our dreadful failing into plenteous, endless solace, and grace works our shameful falling into high, worshipful rising; and grace works our sorrowful dying into holy, blissful life. . . And out of the tender love that our good Lord has to all that shall be saved, He comforts readily and sweetly, signifying [that] all shall be well, and all manner [of] things shall be well . . . And in these words we can see a marvelous and high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in Heaven, in which knowing we hall verily see the cause why He allowed sin to come, in which sight we shall endlessly joy in our Lord God. . . God wills that we take heed to these words, and that we be ever strong in sure trust, in weal and woe. For He loves and enjoys us, and so wills He that we love and enjoy Him and mightily trust in Him; and all shall be well. . . .
All shall be well. For the fulness of joy is to behold God in all. By the same blessed Might, Wisdom, and Love that He made all things, to the same end our good Lord leads continually, and threreto He shall bring it; and when it is time we shall see it. . . . He wills that we know that He takes heed not only to noble and great things, but also to little and small, to low and to simple. . . . And therefore He says that all manner of things shall be well. For He wishes us to know that the least thing shall not be forgotten.
Another understanding [of the claim that all shall be well] is that there are deeds of evil done in our sight, and such great harms taken, that it seems to us that it were impossible that it should ever come to a good end. And upon this we look, sorrowing and mourning, so that we cannot resign ourselves to the blissful beholding of God as we should. . . Thus in these [words that all shall be well] I understand a mightily comfort of all the works in our Lord God that are yet to come. There is a Deed the which the blessed Trinity shall do in the last Day, and when the Deed shall be, and how it shall be done, is unknown of all creatures that are beneath Christ, and shall be till it is done. . ..
This is that Great Deed ordained of our Lord God from without beginning, treasured and hid in His blessed breast, only known to Himself: by which He shall make all things well. For just as the blissful Trinity made all things out of nothing, so the same blessed Trinity shall make well all that is not well.
Writing Exercise:
Write your own piece of lament or praise. You can approach the assignment through a poem or prayer, or through prose, whichever you prefer. If you choose to write in lamentation, feel free to cry out to God, and then focus on who He is and what He’s done. If you choose praise, reflect in detail on His attributes.
When not writing, she loves adventuring through books with her kids, wandering through the mountains, and chasing dragons out of her kitchen.
- Writing for His Glory: Praise and Lamentation - June 10, 2024
- Writer, Treat Your Words as Offerings - April 22, 2024
- Writing for His Glory: Meditate on His Word - March 20, 2024
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