A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching out to God in the Lost Language of Lament »

MICHAEL CARD is an award-winning musician, performing artist, and songwriter. His many songs include "El Shaddai" and "Immanuel." He has also written numerous books, including A Violent Grace, The Parable of Joy, and A Fragile Stone. A graduate of Western Kentucky University with a bachelor's and a master's degree in biblical studies, Card is currently at work on a Ph.D. in classical literature. Michael lives in Tennessee with his wife and four children.

Expand your definition of worship. It's easy to praise God when things in your life are going well, but what about the other times? What happens when mountaintop experiences cascade into seasons of struggling in the valley? God desires for us to pour out our hearts to Him, whether in joy or pain. But many of us don't feel right expressing our anger, frustration, and sadness in prayer. Our personal worship experience is not complete unless we understand the lost language of lament. In A Sacred Sorrow, author, musician, and Bible teacher Michael Card takes you through the Scriptures to show you what your worship and prayer life has been missing. Learn new ways to honor God and deepen your relationship with Him by: -Becoming more honest in worship -Trusting in His unchanging presence -Believing in His constant loving-kindness -Realizing that the sharing of your sorrow is an act of worship From Job to David to Christ, men and women of the Bible understood the importance of pouring one's heart out to the Father. Examine their stories and expand your definition of worship. Let your pain, questions, and sorrow resound with praise to a God who is moved by your tears.

Publishers Weekly

Card, a singer and songwriter, maintains that Christians have forgotten the language of weeping and so are "robbed of our true identity before God"; he prescribes an antidote through paradigms of lament found in Scripture. When sin and dire circumstances cause us to doubt God's hesed, or loving-kindness, lament is a proper response to despair. Without lament, Card claims, we cannot adequately confess sin, worship or experience another's pain. With this in mind, Card illustrates the hows and whys of sorrowful prayer in the lives of Job, David, Jeremiah and Jesus. Long on exposition (what does it mean that "the Word became flesh?") with a touch of speculation (David's personality is attributed in part to his being a youngest child), these chapters chart terrain that will seem foreign to proponents of easy, feel-good Christianity. Especially jarring are sections about imprecatory Psalms ("The righteous will be glad... when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked") and the book of Lamentations, which describes compassionate women boiling their own children. Card illuminates a neglected, difficult doctrine, in the process accomplishing his goal of providing "assurance that we can lament... and a fuller understanding of what that can mean." Appendixes summarize biblical and extra-biblical laments. (Feb. 13) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.