There is a time...

Today I went to a chapel service that is put on for graduate students every Wednesday. I was especially glad to be going to it today as we were scheduled to have a time of mourning for Haiti and a collection taken. I breathed a sigh of relief when I read the email announcing the service. Finally, a time to mourn.

But no. I was wrong. I do not want to come down on the leaders of the service at all. The talk was good. They did not brush over the suffering, they did not skirt the issues, and they did not let us off the hook to respond in active love. I say to this, amen. But it was short, a nod to the suffering, and the songs and scriptures read were singularly at odds with what I had viewed as a time of sorrow and crying out to God against what was happening. I kept looking around as we sang on and on about how "wonderful God's creation" is and how "thankful we are for his unfailing love" feeling sure that someone else was noticing the disconnect. And they probably were, but see, we are used to disconnect. We are used to going on the same old way even when the reality staring us in the face calls for a different action. There is a time for grief and anger, but we just keep pretending the time hasn't changed.

When we got to the hymn "Great is Thy Faithfulness" I couldn't handle it anymore.

Great is thy faithfulness, Oh God my father, there is no shadow of turning with thee... all I have needed thy hand hath provided, Great is thy faithfulness Lord unto me.

What?!? This is the song we sing in light of the destruction of a city that was already destitute? This is what we sing to the deaths of 200,000 people? This is what we sing when violence is erupting everywhere in the streets and people have been laying in rubble helplessly waiting to be rescued?! Oh right, maybe they meant, all I the privileged have needed thy hand hath provided. All I the few and the far away, the protected, the separated. All I have needed has been provided.

It was all I could do not to stand on the pew and scream at the absurdity of the words coming out of our mouths. Instead I just left, and gave God my own words outside.

My God, my God why have you forsaken them?

They are worn our calling for help; their throats are parched their eyes fail looking for their God. Rescue them from the mire! Do not let them sink! Do not hide your face from them! Scorn has broken their hearts and has left them helpless. (psalm 69, adaptation)

O Lord, the God who says he saves, day and night they cry out to you. You have put them in the lowest pit; in the darkest depths. Their eyes are dim with grief. They spread out their hands to you. Do you show your wonders to the dead?! Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in destruction?!? Why, O Lord, do you reject them and hide your face? They have suffered your terrors and are in despair. Your wrath has swept over them, your terrors have destroyed them. All day long it surrounds them. Darkness is their closest friend. (psalm 88, adaptation)

The mentor I met with recently jokingly mentioned that I seemed to have survivor's guilt. I do. I own my guilt for there is blood on my hands. Because friends, if we do not take the responsibility for the injustice of the world, who will?? Who will cry out for those who have no voice? And how will we do that if we do not own their pain as ours, and see our part in it? Yes, the guilt is mine, and it is all of ours, all who have two coats and keep them both (Luke 3:11).

I know friends, I know there is a time for praise in the midst of great suffering, but oftentimes I think this praise is not out of a heart that is facing the full reality of pain and has found the way to thank God anyway, but instead the heart that accepts just as much reality as it can handle with out being brought to its knees. So I ask, if just for a moment, consider holding off your praise and going on to the next thing on your to do list, and instead join the people of Haiti in their abandonment.

Isn't there a time for grief and anger? What time but now? Put on your sack clothe and mourn with me.