Tears of Faith

I read Micah this morning and was left with sadness. Micah doesn’t shout. He laments.

He’s sad.

He doesn’t call down fire.

He walks barefoot through his broken nation.

“For this I will lament and wail;
I will go barefoot and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,
and mourning like the ostriches.”
— Micah 1:8

Micah names the truth:

Corruption at every level.

Worship without justice.

Leaders who devour the people they’re meant to serve.

And he grieves. Of course you can’t grieve if you don’t care. This tells me that Micah was still allowing his heart to be vulnerable. I know I often close my heart to all the pain of the world and the Church because then I don’t have to feel. But not Micah. He grieves.

That’s what lament is. It’s not weakness. It’s not a lack of faith. It’s love that hasn’t given up. It’s very human. It’s emotion rooted in faith.

By chapter 7, the grief hasn’t lifted.

“When I sit in darkness,
the Lord will be a light to me.”
— Micah 7:8

Not if I sit in darkness…When. That line is haunting. We tend to look at faith as that thing that makes us feel better.

But faith doesn’t always come with happiness. Sometimes it comes with tears and the quiet trust that God is still at work even if it may be hard to see. There’s plenty of hope scattered through Micah. He’s not a hopeless depressed prophet. He’s just sad.

The world is a messy broken place. And because we live in a time of the internet and instant communication, we can hear about it all. If you’re not occasionally sad about it all, then maybe like me from time to time, you’ve walled off your heart. Maybe it’s time for some tears of faith. 

This isn’t a call to fix anything. It’s permission to feel. If you’re tired, disillusioned, grieving the church, grieving the world, it’s ok to feel that. It’s ok to sit in the darkness.  Sometimes the holiest thing you can do is sit in the dark and say, “I’m still here. I still believe. Even now. The Lord will be my light.”

Doug Foltz