This will be an especially difficult Memorial Day for our country. A holiday that brings to mind the reality of war and loss is never easy. We instinctively feel that death – especially the loss of men and women in their prime – is a wretched deviation from the norm. Nothing about it seems right, though at least for soldiers, sailors, and airmen we can appreciate the values they fought for. We can look at the heroism in their sacrifice. We lay wreaths in their honor.

The atrocity of last Tuesday was the kind of evil that cannot be understood. Though I’m sure the teachers made heroic efforts to save the children in their care, the rest of the scene was terror and brutality. You can read the details in the news. Nineteen children and two teachers were slain on the whim of one man with a gun.

There are problems afoot in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I’m not a lawmaker, so I have no bipartisan solution. I’m not in law enforcement, so I don’t have an airtight security plan. I’m a parent with his own children heading to school every day. I try to place myself among those parents and I cannot begin to measure their agony. Something has gone horribly wrong and while prayer cannot be the end of the discussion, it is the only place to begin for people of faith. The psalmist was enveloped in a distress he could not understand and wrote:

I am overwhelmed with troubles; and my life draws near to death. I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like one without strength.

Psalm 88:3-4, NIV

Moments like these in the psalms are called laments – prayers spoken through clenched teeth at the height of sorrow. Laments cry out to God when life has taken a turn that makes no sense. Innocence treated to viciousness. Righteousness met with cruelty. In the face of evil, we begin by clinging to the ray of hope that God still hears us:

Lord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.

Psalm 88:1-2, NIV

On this Memorial Day, we remember those lost on foreign battlefields in distant wars. We also cannot help but cry out for the lives ended right here on our soil. Turn your ear to our cries, Lord. May our prayers of lament come before you.