From Lament to Spaciousness
Oct 15, 2025This week, I felt a quiet tug, an invitation to return to Scripture. I’d been praying with apps like Hallow and through Centering Prayer, but this felt different. I needed a new rhythm. Not analysis. Not to study. I’ve done plenty of that lately.
What I longed for was presence.
Less head, more heart.
My mind has been in overdrive for most of this year, and I suddenly craved something I could simply read rather than dissect. I thought of the wisdom texts.
Proverbs? Maybe.
Ecclesiastes? “All is vanity.” No, not today.
And then, of course! It hit me. What about the Psalms?
So I reached for my dusty NRSV Bible and began to read. Before long, I found myself deep in the territory of lament: “Depart from me, all you workers of evil” (Psalm 6:8). There was rawness, ache, and honesty.
In our usual Friday morning Centering Prayer class hosted by Wisdom Tree Collective, a friend who was facilitating this day shared the devotion of Psalm 66. I hadn’t reached it yet in my reading, but its tone was dramatically different. Where Psalm 6 groans, “Heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror”, Psalm 66 sings: “Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth.”
It's a psalm of praise and remembering. It's joy that rises even after the fire and the flood.
It felt like a glimpse of what’s ahead for WTC, a reminder that lament and joy are not opposites, but companions on the spiritual journey. One teaches us how to cry out to God; the other teaches us how to sing again.
“Though we’ve been refined like silver, hemmed in by nets, and weighed down with burdens, the Divine still brings us out to a spacious place.” (Psalm 66:10–12, paraphrased)
At Wisdom Tree Collective, we often speak of spaciousness, those moments when God’s presence feels wide and full, even in the aftermath of pain. Spiritual direction invites us to notice that movement: the shift from constriction to openness, from fear to trust, from lament to song.
Our suffering is not the ending. It’s a passage.
And joy, even here, within the ache, is a quiet act of hope.
There, in the mystery of grace, spaciousness awaits.
~Katie Rea, WTC Writing Coach.
(Personal post rewritten for WTC.)
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