Ending Lamentations with Hope

I shared on Wednesday about praying lamentations with a shrug and a sigh, sharing a prayer at the end that was a model of what I view as a prayerful lament, one prayed full of doubt yet knowing that there will be a turn of hope and joy.  I wanted to share how I think laments turn by sharing the final stanza of that prayer poem and how doubt and a feeling of absence is closer to faith and fullness than we sometimes realize–lament and praise form a tension that is appropriately called life.

And yet hope be not lost
(we cannot afford it)
For the absence of light
Is the memory of light
Permeating the minds of all
And stirring the pollen
Of plums, and peaches,
And the prairie grasses.

As I was lamenting over how fragile nature seems sometimes, especially the seedlings that would become my garden, it seemed like death is so easy. Yet, as I doubted that things could somehow keep surviving, I realized that in death there is always a memory of life—death can never stamp out life, for life is always an echo, always a ripple, always surging forth even at the most dire of times.