The spiritual practice of lament is a proper response when we come face to face with our brokenness and the brokenness of our world. This year in the season of Lent, our community will be crafting experiments to help us make space in our lives for this important practice.
Nicole guided our time as we explored the ways we avoid and suppress our pain,. We asked God what activity we might set aside or fast from in this season to make room for lament. Then we wrote our own psalms of lament using the pattern seen in the Book of Psalms. You can find the handout we used to craft our experiments and write a psalm of lament here.
Kingdom Practice
The invitation for this season is to craft and live in our experiments. What will you give up to make space for lament, and how can you pause at least four times each week to write your own psalm of lament? Over the next three weeks, we will highlight one of three forms of lament (laments for our sin, injustice, and loss). Each week, we’ll look to write four laments in the category of that week.
We also know community is a necessary element of these experiments. Community not only helps us stay committed to our experiments, but it gives us a place to talk about and process what we are learning. If you are connected in a Practice Table, that will be your community. If you are not we would like you to either invite a couple people to join you in the experiment (they could be in our community or not) or we can help connect you into a short-term group. These groups will have a simple, weekly check in via a group text or group email. If you are forming your own group or would like to be connected, will you let us know here? We would love to support you in the experiment, and share additional resources along the way.
You can find the Order of Practice here.
If The Practice Church has been meaningful to you, would you consider supporting the work of The Practice Church with a tax-deductible gift?
If you are committed to being a part of the local Practice Church community, would you take a moment to join the Plant Team?
If you would like to stay up to date on The Practice Church, join the Practice mailing list.