From ancient cultures to flashpoints in our own world, the rhythms and lyrics of an ancient art form, the lament, have provide an indispensable vehicle for women and men to give voice to their grief and protest. Nancy C. Lee surveys lament in the Abrahamic sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; examples of the people's lament in poetry and song from over thirty cultures worldwide; and practices for recovering lamentation as a vital expression for faith today. Book jacket.

Lament seems to have been universal in the ancient world. As such, it is an excellent touchstone for the comparative study of attitudes towards death and the afterlife, human relations to the divine, views of the cosmos, and the constitution of the fabric of society in different times and places. This collection of essays offers the first ever comparative approach to ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions of lament. Beginning with the Sumerian and Hittite traditions, the volume moves on to examine Bronze Age iconographic representations of lamentation, Homeric lament, depictions of lament in Greek tragedy and parodic comedy, and finally lament in ancient Rome. The list of contributors includes such noted scholars as Richard Martin, Ian Rutherford, and Alison Keith. Lament comes at a time when the conclusions of the first wave of the study of lament-especially Greek lament-have received widespread acceptance, including the notions that lament is a female genre; that men risked feminization if they lamented; that there were efforts to control female lamentation; and that a lamenting woman was a powerful figure and a threat to the orderly functioning of the male public sphere. Lament revisits these issues by reexamining what kinds of functions the term lament can include, and by expanding the study of lament to other genres of literature, cultures, and periods in the ancient world. The studies included here reflect the variety of critical issues raised over the past 25 years, and as such, provide an overview of the history of critical thinking on the subject.

A loving father explores with honesty and intensity all facets of his grief at the death of his 25-year-old son.

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. 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. Also available: A Sacred Sorrow Experience Guide (9781576836682, sold separately), to help individuals or small groups get the most out of this book.

A piano man in 1960s New York keeps to himself and away from his father's mob ties until his hit collaboration with Esther Mine thrusts him into a national spotlight that also stirs up issues with his father's associates.

In this well-argued and timely book, Bauckham considers the relationship of humans to the rest of creation.He argues that there is much more to the Bible’s understanding of this relationship than the mandate of human dominion given in Genesis 1, which has too often been used as a justification for domination and exploitation of the earth’s resources. He also critiques the notion of stewardship as being on the one hand presumptuous, and on the other too general a term to explain our key responsibilities in caring for the earth. In countering this, he considers other biblical perspectives, including the book of Job, the Psalms and the Gospels, and re-evaluates the biblical tradition of ‘dominion’, in favour of a ‘community of creation’.With its clear analysis and thought-provoking conclusions, The Bible and Ecology is an essential read for anyone interested in a biblically grounded approach to ecology.

Since its rediscovery by nineteenth-century scholarship, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61 has never been ignored, though it has also not gained a great deal of notoriety beyond the scholars of Middle English romance. It is hoped that the present volume will encourage study of the entire manuscript as a valuable witness to the devotional habits, cultural values, and popular tastes of late medieval England.

Lament is how you live between the poles of a hard life and trusting God’s goodness. Lament is how we bring our sorrow to God—but it is a neglected dimension of the Christian life for many Christians today. We need to recover the practice of honest spiritual struggle that gives us permission to vocalize our pain and wrestle with our sorrow. Lament avoids trite answers and quick solutions, progressively moving us toward deeper worship and trust. Exploring how the Bible—through the psalms of lament and the book of Lamentations—gives voice to our pain, this book invites us to grieve, struggle, and tap into the rich reservoir of grace and mercy God offers in the darkest moments of our lives.

Lament does not seem to be a pervasive feature of the New Testament, particularly when viewed in relation to the Old Testament. A careful investigation of the New Testament, however, reveals that it thoroughly incorporates the pattern of Old Testament lament into its proclamation of the gospel, especially in the person of Jesus Christ as he both prays and embodies lament. As an act that fundamentally calls upon God to be faithful to God's promises to Israel and to the church, lament in the New Testament becomes a prayer of longing for God's kingdom, which has been inaugurated in the ministry and resurrection of Jesus, fully to come.

Lament helps us hear God’s louder song. When you’re in the midst of suffering, you want answers for the unanswerable, resolutions to the unresolvable. You want to tie up pain in a pretty little package and hide it under the bed, taking it out only when you feel strong enough to face it. But grief won’t be contained. Grief disobeys. Grief explodes. In one breath, you may be able to say that God’s got this and all will be well. In the next, you might descend into fatalism. No pretending. Here, you are raw before God, an open wound. There is a pathway through this suffering. It’s not easy, but God will use it to lead you toward healing. This path is called lament. Lament leads us between the Already and the Not Yet. Lament minds the gap between current hopelessness and coming hope. Lament anticipates new creation but also acknowledges the painful reality of now. Lament recognizes the existence of evil and suffering—without any sugarcoating—while simultaneously declaring that suffering will not have the final say. In the midst of your darkest times, you will discover that lament leads you back to a place of hope—not because lamenting does anything magical, but because God sings a louder song than suffering ever could, a song of renewal and restoration.