Monday - World

Lament - verb -a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.
Longing - noun - a yearning desire.

Those are the definitions of lament and longing in the Oxford English Dictionary. We might see them as two sides of the same coin or two threads intertwined together. The act of lamenting points us to that thing which our hearts are longing for. Setting our hearts toward Easter, we will be reflecting on several moments taken from that last week of Jesus’ earthly life leading up to the first Easter. We begin in the same place he did: lament and longing.

⁴¹ As he approached and saw the city, he wept for it, ⁴² saying, “If you knew this day what would bring peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. ⁴³ For the days will come on you when your enemies will build a barricade around you, surround you, and hem you in on every side. ⁴⁴ They will crush you and your children among you to the ground, and they will not leave one stone on another in your midst, because you did not recognize the time when God visited you.”
Luke 19:41-44 CSB

Most people would agree that we live in a broken world…in a fallen world. But, it can still be breath-taking at times. Have you ever looked at a stunning landscape or an awe-inspiring piece of art and felt a sense of deep longing for something more? For a world that isn’t so broken?

It’s such a common feeling that there’s a German expression for it: Sehnsucht. The literal translation is a form of longing that is used expressly to capture the feeling of a deep, almost inexplicable yearning for something that is both desired and unattainable.

We sometimes feel this way toward the world we live in because it is a fallen world…and our Christ-centered hearts know that this is not what Creation was meant to be.

This is also expressed whenever we’re faced with natural disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes. These are also results of the fall. When we say we live in a fallen world, it’s not just the people, but all of Creation. And in the same way we long for the Paradise that was originally intended for us, so does the rest of Creation. We’re told in Romans 8 that Creation itself is “waiting eagerly for the children of God to be revealed” and that it has been “groaning as if in the pains of childbirth” as a result of the fall.

Of course, the humans living in the world described above are also broken and fallen. As such, no powers we assign or elect will be able to “fix” the world or its problems. We can see a glimpse of Jesus’ concern and pain toward this when he laments for Jerusalem in Luke 19. He knows the troubles that are on the way for those people, and verse 41 tells us that "he wept for it."

The world is filled with lamentable things: war, poverty, natural disasters, sickness, and on and on. Our realization of these things as well as our desire to have them “fixed” points to the longing for a world that works…for a world described to us in Genesis before the fall.

Reflection Question:
1. To you, what is lamentable as you reflect on the brokenness you see in the world?

Prayer:
Take a moment and talk to God about these things. As you pray, consider Psalm 46.