Coal to my lips

“For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears” Lamentations 1:16.

Personally… in Zaculeu this February, as I translated at least an hour of stories of the massacres that these beautiful people had suffered in their own flesh… something happened. I have heard many stories of massacres here in Guatemala since I have arrived. That day as I translated, I became the means for them to lament to God and neighbor. Their words and pain came into me so that as I translated it the pain and suffering could be shared.

One after another the members of the church stood up and added their sufferings to the others. The horror was indescribable and my call was to share that suffering in my mother tongue to the brothers and sisters who had come to be in solidarity with the church.

Is this what the writer of Lamentations felt when they put to words the suffering, the cry of the people? Is this what Isaiah felt when his lips were burned with the coal of the seraphs? I did not suffer what these people suffered but by translating it I was forced to take it, in a small way, into myself and then give it away so that it could be heard and healed. Is this what we do as pastors in confession… take it in and give it to God to receive His forgiveness?

There are things that only God can receive… and He too cries upon receiving them. For these reasons, He went to the cross so that this suffering is not the end. Rather it meets its end in the cross. Death… so that their might be life.