Friday's Email: When There are No (English) Words

In the Korean language, there is a word - han. I remember years ago my parents trying to explain what it meant. “There is no English translation for han,” my father said. I watched him struggle with the words in trying to describe it. “It is … deepest sorrow, grief, bitterness, anger, longing… all rolled into one.” 

I was in Zoom calls all day yesterday, some of which I had to lead, and I could feel myself pushing it down, trying to hold it together, this pervasive feeling of… han. And I fear that if I stop long enough to let myself feel it, let it wash over me, I may not be able to pull myself back together again. 

And yet, being people of the Book, we know that han, while not called that in Scripture, is all over the place. “How long, O Lord?” is a refrain that the psalmists and the prophets cried out again and again. We see Jesus turning over tables in anger and sweating drops of blood in the garden saying, “My soul is sorrowful unto death.” 
Anger and grief do not separate us from God. They draw us closer and deeper into the very depths of God's being. It is the prayer of lament. We lament because we are made in the image of God. We lament because we love. We lament because we know, this is not the way it's supposed to be. 
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There is a season for everything, the writer of Ecclesiastes says. Lament is not the only thing we do. There is a time to act. This is where I am this morning and that is the place from which I write. I pray that wherever you are this morning, that you would sense God's invitation to bring whatever you are carrying into the depths of God's being and know, he receives and holds it all. 

- Christine