Before I left my last call in South Carolina I spent a good amount of time working up a preaching schedule, planning out my Scripture texts and sermons until the end of the year. Well, it seems that every time I plan something, my plans are interrupted. And I'm going to forget what I was to preach on today, and switch topics.

I'm doing this because you and I have been through some rough times in recent weeks. You are such a close congregation, and I know you are hurting because of the deaths of some folks you loved dearly, deaths of a young man, a young woman, who died too young and left behind children and spouses and hurting hearts.

I am hurting too. Three weeks ago, the day before I was to leave my last church, I spent four hours in the boiler room of the Bishopville Presbyterian Church with a church member, a friend, who had a loaded and cocked revolver to his head, trying to talk him out of committing suicide. I did not succeed, and he took his life there in front of me.

How shall we, as God's people, people of faith, respond when these things happen? Some of us search for explanations; we think if we can figure out some reason why so-and-so happened, our aching hearts will be healed. And ingenious thinkers have for thousands of years grappled with those questions.

Yet the scriptures give us no-clear-cut answers to our "Whys?" There are no answers to why bad things happen to good people. Scripture does not try to link tragedy and pain to some larger purpose. No, scripture gives us something else altogether. Scripture teaches us to lament, to cry out to God when tragedy and sadness and suffering strike.

We shall now read of two examples of lamenting; the first from the book of Job, and the second, from the mouth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Scripture

Old Job. Do you remember his story? He is the most righteous man in the world, and is living a near perfect life. He is wealthy, he looks after the poor, he has a wonderful family. And one day it all comes crashing in. As Frederick Buechner put it, "The Sabeans ran off with his donkeys and oxen and slaughtered the hired hands. Lightning struck his sheep team and burned up the whole flock, not to mention the shepherds. The Chaldeans rustled his camels and made short work of the camel drivers. And a hurricane hit with such devastating effect the house where his seven sons and three daughters were having a party that there wasn't enough left of them in the wreckage to identify."1 And then on top of all that Job developed leprosy.

What was Job's response to all this? He did not show patience, or quiet resignation. No! Job lamented, by crying out to God, wrestling with God, complaining to God, a God who seemed utterly absent.

Scripture is full of lament. The psalms most notably -- "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?" (Ps. 22:12). Jeremiah shook his fist at God and bellowed at him, "O Lord, you enticed me, and I was enticed; and you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me. Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed!" (Jeremiah 20:7,14). Indeed, a whole book of the Bible the book of Lamentations -- is devoted to the laments of the people of Israel whose nation was destroyed, and who were carried off in chains to captivity in Babylon.