Dear friends in Christ,

There are moments when the news breaks something open in us—not just our hearts but our spirituality. This is one of those moments.

Girls went to school in Tehran. They did not come home. Refineries burn, and the smoke drifting over neighborhoods is carcinogenic, slow violence, visited upon lungs that never asked to be in the way of anything. In the streets, the same government meant to protect its people has turned weapons on them instead.

We are called to lament this. Not analyze it first. Lament first.

A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted for they are no more (Jeremiah 31:15).

The prophet is referring to Rachel as the mother of Israel, mourning the loss of her descendants. Jesus uses this passage in Matthew 2:17-18 to describe Herod’s massacre of the little boys.

Have we lost the ability to lament? Are we afraid that if we allow pangs of sadness and distress to surface, we’ll be overcome, and as many say, “I’ll never stop crying?”

One way not to lament is to shrug one’s shoulders and opine, “Oh well, another ‘collateral damage’ of a necessary war.” To go this route is to disempower oneself and lose hope. Unless we claim the freedom and courage to follow Rachel’s example, we will continue to worship in the shrine that allows for such violence. Scripture counsels us to not look away from state-inflicted sorrow.

The Psalms give us permission—even obligation—to cry out when the world tears apart. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13). This is not weak faith. This is the most honest faith there is.

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls the peacemakers blessed—but he also blesses those who mourn. These are not separate beatitudes. They belong together. None of us can make peace with what we have not first allowed ourselves to grieve.

A girl carrying a school backpack is not a combatant. She is, in the language of scripture, the least of these—the one in whose face Jesus told us we would find his own face (Matthew 25:40). When bombs fall on schools, they fall on the face of Christ. This is not metaphor. It is the perpetuation of evil.

In our society, we greatly overestimate life lived from the head by neglecting the heart. Thoughts over feelings. We neglect the integration of the two. No wonder we make a case against lamentation.

We do not have magic wands to change horrors unfolding. We do not set foreign policy. Yet we are not helpless. The prophetic tradition begins with naming what is actually happening: girls are dead, air is poisoned, and people are being shot by their own leaders. Naming injustice is an act of resistance. Naming falsehoods in the early days of this faith that was originally called The Way is resistance: Caesar is not the son of God. Jesus is.

In such a time as this, more than ever, may we embrace the advice of Paul to the Ephesians, “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” (Eph. 4:15). Such a path requires vulnerability and courage.

Your fellow traveler,

—Richard