Michael Card - A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament

This new and very timely book is a real treasure. I highly recommend this book to everyone, especially to those who are presently undergoing that wilderness experience of deep hurt and trials. This is a book for our times, an important companion to our daily walk with God.

P HIL K EAGGY
guitarist

Michael is a humbled troubadouran itinerant, a singing preacher whose ballads are biblically rich, whose personal ministry is Christ-centered, and whose writings have but one intent: to bring glory to God by leading and feeding His children.

H AROLD M. B EST

dean emeritus, Wheaton College Conservatory of Music; author of Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts, and Music Through the Eyes of Faith.

In an age characterized by triumphalism, it is hard to find biblically faithful meditations and songs on weakness, sin, lament, and suffering. Michael Card helps us understand the tears, while pointing us to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the comfort only he can give us, both in this life and in the life to come.

D R. D. A. C ARSON
research professor, New Testament Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

A Sacred Sorrow is a refreshingly honest book about our dialogue with God and our life within the community of faith. The truths in it are absolutely liberating. It will not only change your prayer life, it will change every area of your life. I couldnt recommend a book more highly than I do this one.

K EN G IRE
author of Windows of the Soul, Moments with the Savior,and The Divine Embrace

Michael Card has lowered a bridge of lament across the moat of self-contentment and called us to weep in our fallen world, where only weeping can heal.

C ALVIN M ILLER

professor of preaching and ministry studies, Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Alabama

This book is written with a redemptive empathy for all who are hurting and helps us reconceive what it means to praise the Lord.

C ALVIN S EERVELD
senior member of philosophical aesthetics, emeritus, at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, and author of Voicing Gods Psalms

A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament

Copyright 2005 by Michael Card. All rights reserved.

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Creative Team: Rachelle Gardner, Darla Hightower, Arvid Wallen, Glynese Northam

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Jewish Publication Society Bible, JPSB. Copyright 1985 by The Jewish Publication Society. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

Some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permission of the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, and any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Tyndale House Publishers at , or call 1-800-323-9400.

Card, Michael, date

A sacred sorrow : reaching out to God in the lost language of lament / Michael Card.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-57683-667-3

1. Consolation. 2. SufferingReligious aspectsChristianity. 3. Laments. I. Title.

BV4909.C365 2005

248.86dc22

2004030268

ISBN 978-1-57683-667-5

Build: 2021-04-21 22:35:18 EPUB 3.0

Many scholars have helped me along this difficult path. Calvin Seerveld was the impetus for the start of the journey. Shortly after 9/11, I received a note from him in which he observed that we, in the American church, had no songs to sing in response to the horrific attack. The truth of what he wrote was self evident. You need to write laments, to equip lament teams, he said. I owe a tremendous debt to Calvin for that timely note.

Shortly afterward, on a visit to Trinity International University, Dr. Sun Myung Lyu, in a remarkable gesture of generosity, picked a book off the shelf in his office and handed it to me saying, Receive this as my gift to you. I want to invest in your project. The book was Walter Brueggemanns The Psalms, the Life of Faith. That marvelous volume provided the foundation for my understanding of lament. Dr. Lyu, if anyone is encouraged by this present work, much of the thanks should go to you.

During that same visit, my friend Dr. Willem Van Gemeren also generously gave blocks of time to help get me started in the right direction. Later, Dr. D.A. Carson read the manuscript and helped me sharpen the theological focus. Their remarkable openness and the reassuring promise of their future help has made an enormous difference. I felt as if the safety net of their scholarship was always there. Thank you, brothers.

Dr. George Guthrie (Union University) has been a longtime friend and encourager, especially since Bill Lane passed away. His openness and willingness to join me as a conversation partner on this difficult journey has been a deep blessing. Thanks, George.

The writings of Ingvar `Floysvik and Michael Jinkins became primary resources and have helped so much to guide and shape the direction of this book. My gratitude to them for the enormous help provided in those volumes.

Most of all, I would like to thank Walter Brueggemann. His many articles and books not only shone a much needed light on this sorely neglected subject but they also provided a new vocabulary for thinking and talking about what is true of lament. His unique words and creative phrases will appear and reappear in this manuscript. I have sought to place them in quotation marks to show they are not original. His thought is present on nearly every page as is my gratitude to God for him.

As I was beginning in earnest to work on the rough manuscript, after having read many academic books and technical articles on the subject of lament, I picked up a remarkable book entitled A Fistful of Agates. It had been sent as a gift by the author months earlier. I had intended only to skim through it. Hours later, when, in tears, I finally put it down, I was given a whole new appreciation for Bill Lanes often repeated maxim, Timing is of the Lord. The timing of the reading of Jane Wipfs book was perfect. I had done the background, academic work. It was intensely interesting and held together intellectually. But God wanted a fully engaged person to write this book. And so, by means of Janes book, He gently led me through the experience of lament at a heart level (which is, of course, the only level it can genuinely be understood or experienced!). All this is to say, thank you, Jane, for what it must have cost you to write that book.