78. The Mourning Prayer
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I cried like a swift or thrush,
I moaned like a mourning dove.
My eyes grew weak
as I looked to the heavens.
I am troubled; O LORD, come to my aid!
Isaiah 38:14H
AVEyou ever heard the wailing cry of a mourning dove? It is
like the sound of a widow at the funeral of her husband. It is
like the moaning of the wind through the pine trees or the distant
whistle of a train.
Have you ever felt that same sense of mourning in your own
heart? I have. At times it has been for some very specific reason, like
sharing the pain of a friend or lamenting the choices one of my chil-
dren was making. Sometimes it has been over something less tangi-
ble, a vague sense of abandonment or of being misunderstood.
Regardless of my reasons, it helps me to look at the life of my Lord
and realize that he, too, had feelings of deep sorrow. The prophet
Isaiah painted a vivid prophetic portrait of the “suffering servant”
when he described Jesus this way: “He was despised and rejected by