Bawling and Squalling…a Much Needed Thing

This past year has offered so many new and exciting opportunities. Having two new crowns placed on my teeth was such a gratifying experience…if you’re a cracked tooth.

One tooth had a small crack in my lower, rear left set of teeth. I knew that, eventually, I would be forced to crown it. The searing pain that swept through my entire head and body everytime something cold, hot or neutral touched that area convinced me that it was time for the crown. And, as if that little jaunt through the world of Novacaine wasn’t enough, I had tooth crack in half on the other side of my mouth just a couple of months later. This 2010 has definitely been the year of the cracked tooth…metaphorical implications to my overall state of mind intended…

The thing I seem to remember most about having those crowns put on my teeth were not the crowns themselves. My strongest memory was the total of 15 Novacaine shots that it took between the two crowns to get my blockheaded jaw and gums numb enough to do the work.

After the procedure was complete, the Novacaine remains for a while. Do you think anyone has ever chewed a hole completely through his or her jaw under the influence of Novacaine? Nothing quite like chewing on your food only to realize that it is actually the soft tissue of your jaw.  AAAHHH!!!…THAT HURTS LIKE CRAZY…after the medicine wears off!!   Not only have you turned the inside of your jaw into hamburger – under the influence of Novacaine – but the jaw is swollen so you bite it eight times a day for the next three days.

Destructive things can happen when the human ability to feel pain is eliminated. Pain is not something we welcome, but it is something God gave us as a gift. Feeling pain helps us to recognize that something is very wrong and cry out for help.  In this context, the bawling and squalling is not so bad.  It can actually be life – or jaw – saving. 

I am convinced by Scripture and experience that this principle of pain can be applied spiritually.  If Christians are numb to spiritual dysfunction around them, they might think it’s time to laugh instead of mourn.  Ecclesiates is clear that there is a proper time to bawl and squall.  Could that time, for Christians and the church in America, be 2011? 

I have a prayer for 2011.  This prayer is that many of God’s people would cease to be numb to spiritual dysfunction and injury in our churches and lives, and would learn to bawl and squall to the only One who can help. 

The prophet Jeremiah was a guy who really knew how to bawl.  It is no accident that his nickname is The Weeping Prophet.  In the last chapter of the book of Jeremiah, he recounts the story of how Judah (the southern kingdom left from Israel) was finally overrun, sacked, exiled and the temple burned down.  He was broken and distraught over the circumstances.  I guess you could say that Jeremiah had no spiritual Novacaine to dull the ache and grief of a people destroyed. 

So then…what did he do?

He did the only thing one can do when intense pain is felt and there is nothing to dull it.  He screamed, cried and wept…to God.  And…finally…He sought God for help.  It was the pain that drove Jeremiah to God.

That bawling and squalling of  Jeremiah is a book called Lamentations.  It is organized as a funeral lament, but the book is capped off by an intense prayer in Lamentations 5.  It is my intense desire to see Christians in Middle Georgia, Georgia, the Southeast and all over America – in fact around the world – find their bawling voices this year and cry out to God for spiritual renewal and revival the same way Jeremiah cried out to God in Lamentations 5.

I challenge any reader of this piece to spend the next week or so reading and meditating on this prayer in Lamentations 5.  Note the form and key elements of it.  Note how open, honest and confessional it is.  Then…notice how it is prayed in a way that acknowledges only God as our help. 

Yeah..yeah..I know.  I haven’t written on this blog in almost a year.  And, when I decide to write a piece for the new year, I write something that is not “Your Best Life Now” rosey posey wealth and success.  Instead, I write something that seems dark and harsh.  It only seems harsh if you fail to see the backside of this call to wail.

It is my sense that one of the greatest needs of God’s people right now is to feel the pain of sin, unrepentance, apostasy and spiritual apathy.  If we would learn some good ole bawling and squalling Jeremiah’s way in 2011, the Father to whom we squall is able to come in and respond.  As He then moves in to forgive, comfort and revive, the church in America could very well have a new energy.  And…who knows…we then might be able to help those who are bawling in the streets but don’t really know where to turn.

God help us NOT to be numb to the spiritual dysfunction and pain in our churches in 2011.  God help us to feel the necessary brokenness that we might seek the necessary healing in 2011.  God help us learn to cry out to you in 2011.

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