The Cross, the Crook, and the Crown
Let me tell you what frustrates me most about little kids.
Last weekend, my family was at lunch at a nice restaurant. My one-year-old got a french fry from my hand — but it wasn't the right french fry. He wanted the other one from the pile. So what did he do? He launched the biggest meltdown the restaurant had ever seen. People looked over at our table like we'd just done something terrible to him. Meanwhile, I'm whispering, "THIS one? No? THIS one?!" while this kid is grieving over a potato.
My toddler is the same way. He can't ride his bicycle down the playground slide? Lament. He can't play in his soiled diaper? Lament. He doesn't care about the disease — he cares about the diaper.
And while I'm sorting through french fries instead of becoming the Instagram influencer dad I imagined I'd be, a strange thought occurs to me: Wouldn't it be nice if I could lose my mind in the same way?
Because deep down — over the car accident, the diagnosis, the layoff, the loss — many of us want to crash out the way our toddlers do. But somewhere along the way, we learned to swallow it. Our culture has told us it isn't appropriate to grieve in public, and most of us don't even do it in private anymore.
Welcome to church.
What the Psalms Reveal That We've Forgotten
The book of Psalms is a collection of 150 songs, prayers, and poems — divided into five smaller books — written across hundreds of years by King David, Asaph, the Sons of Korah, and other anonymous authors. The Holy Spirit inspired every one of them, and they have shaped how God's people pray for thousands of years.
Here's something that should stop you in your tracks: roughly one-third of the Psalms are songs of lament. Not praise. Not thanksgiving. Lament. Grief poured out before God.
Think about your own life and your own church. When was the last time we sang a song of lament together? When did we last weep over the lost as a community? When did we, as God's people, allow ourselves to grieve out loud in His presence?
If the Psalms are God's prayer book — and they are — then God expects His people to spend a significant portion of our prayer life in lament. Somewhere along the way, we quietly cut that out.
The Psychology Catches Up to Scripture
Modern psychology has a term for what we've been doing: experiential avoidance. It's the pattern of refusing to feel difficult emotions — suppressing them, escaping them, numbing them.
Named in the 1990s, experiential avoidance is now considered an underlying cause of anxiety, depression, OCD, and PTSD. Studies show that avoiding difficult feelings provides temporary relief — but the long-term consequences are much worse. Unprocessed grief doesn't disappear. It spreads. It metastasizes.
The DSM-5 now recognizes Prolonged Grief Disorder. Roughly two-thirds of people who carry unprocessed grief end up clinically depressed, often with mood disorders. Unlamented grief is a documented pathway into depression and anxiety.
Three thousand years ago, David wrote:
"For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long." — Psalm 32:3
It's almost as if Christians have known this all along.
The truth is that the road to depression, anxiety, and even bipolar disorder is often paved with unprocessed and prolonged grief. And right now, in our churches, there are people quietly drowning in this. If that's you, lean in. The God of the Universe doesn't just want to offer you a better way — He wants to give you the answer to the epidemic.
How Early Christians Prayed the Psalms
For thousands of years, Christians have used the Psalms as their model for prayer. The early desert fathers and mothers prayed through all 150 Psalms every single day. They sat for four to six hours, working through the entire Psalter.
They took the apostle Paul's command to "pray without ceasing" seriously. So they chose the Psalms — the prayer book God Himself had given them — as the rhythm of continuous prayer. Even today, Trappist monks at an abbey outside Dubuque, Iowa, pray through all 150 Psalms every two weeks. Many have memorized every one.
The early monks carried 150 pebbles. As they prayed each Psalm, they dropped a rock. When the pebbles became impractical, they invented prayer ropes — leather cords with 150 knots, one for each Psalm. If a believer couldn't memorize 150 Psalms, they would pray 150 repetitions of the Lord's Prayer or the Jesus Prayer:
Breathe in: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God. Breathe out: Have mercy on me, a sinner.
These weren't religious gimmicks. They were tools to keep God's people in constant communion with the Living God — and the early church understood that this communion would necessarily include lament.
The Arc of the Psalms: From Lament to Praise
Here's what those early Christians discovered as they prayed through the entire Psalter day after day: the book of Psalms has a deliberate trajectory.
Book 1 (Psalms 3–41): Individual lament — "My God, why have YOU forsaken ME?"
Book 2: Community lament — God's people grieving together.
Book 3: National lament — the valley of grief, the deepest concentration of sorrow in the Psalter.
Book 4: The turning point — a return of hope, a reorientation toward God.
Book 5: The Hallel — songs of praise. Psalms 146–150 each begin and end with Hallelujah.
The word "Hallelujah" is a compound of two Hebrew words: Hallel (praise) and Yah (short for YHWH, the name of God). It literally means Praise YHWH — a command.
What the early Christians realized is that the Psalms move from lament to praise — and the praise at the end isn't the praise of someone who skipped the valley. It's the praise of someone who walked through it.
Our problem today is that we want the Hallelujah without the descent it took to get there. We want the mountaintop without the climb. But lament doesn't cancel praise — it deepens it. It tempers it.
Praise that has never known lament is praise that has never been proven.
If you aren't grieving today, you will be. And God has given us, in the Psalms, the framework to walk through it in a way that ends in praise.
The Trilogy: The Cross, The Crook, and The Crown
To see this arc in miniature, look at three Psalms that go together: Psalms 22, 23, and 24. Three Psalms, one movement.
Psalm 22 — The Cross
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?" — Psalm 22:1–2
This isn't just a Psalm of lament — it is the Psalm Jesus quoted from the cross. When Jesus cried out "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani," every Jewish person in earshot would have recognized the opening line of Psalm 22 — and would have understood He was, in effect, quoting the whole Psalm.
Read the rest of the chapter and the prophetic precision is stunning. He is mocked (v.7), encompassed by enemies (v.12), poured out like water (v.14), His hands and feet pierced (v.16), His garments divided (v.18). Psalm 22 is a prophetic image of the cross — and it is the picture of lament.
God, how could you allow this? God, why me? Where are you?
Are you afraid to feel that kind of lament? Are you afraid to bring it to God?
I'll be honest — this week, studying this, I realized how little I let myself lament. I am Type-A. I'm the kind of guy who schedules it. Block it out, get it done, move on. David wrote Psalm 88. I would have written a to-do list.
When my grandmother passed, I told a friend, "I've already gone through Denial, Anger, and Bargaining — I gave them five minutes each. I'm in Depression now. Can we go get chocolate and Dr. Pepper?" We talked about her. Acceptance — done. I'm fine.
Until I walked through the grocery store, saw a box of yellow cake mix, and lost it.
Lament cannot be scheduled. The grief of Psalm 22 is not meant to be glossed over. It is meant to be screamed. But even the Psalmist doesn't stay there.
Psalm 23 — The Crook
"The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want…" — Psalm 23:1
The Cross leads to the Crook — the shepherd's staff.
Psalm 22 shows Jesus on the cross. Psalm 23 shows our Messiah as our Shepherd — the one who leads us in paths of righteousness, who anoints our heads with oil, who fills our cup to overflowing.
This is the goal Psalm 22 has been straining toward all along: that God the Father has always wanted to be near us, like a shepherd with His sheep, leading and guiding and blessing us. Psalm 23 describes the state of the church right now. Christ is our Shepherd. He is leading His flock — together — to peaceful streams and green meadows. His rod and staff are comforting us.
But notice the very last line:
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I SHALL dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
The whole Psalm has been in the present — and the last line shifts to the future. The Psalm sounds unfinished. Because it is.
Psalm 24 — The Crown
"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein…" — Psalm 24:1
The Cross, the Crook, and finally — the Crown.
Psalm 24 looks forward. It asks: Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall climb out of the grief of Psalm 22 and into God's presence? He who has clean hands and a pure heart. That is the church. That is the flock from Psalm 23. That is you and me. That is the generation that seeks God's face.
And then the Psalm pivots into a prayer Christians have been praying for two thousand years as they face Jerusalem and await Christ's return:
"Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!"
The Cross. The Crook. The Crown. Lament. Shepherding. Glory.
Lament Always Gives Way to Hope
Here's what the Psalms — and the early Christians who prayed them daily — knew that most of us have forgotten: lament always gives way to hope. It does not end in despair. It is the road through the valley, not a campsite in it.
If you are sitting in lament today, you are not stuck. You are not stranded. The whole arc of Scripture — and the whole rhythm of the Psalms — bends toward the Crown. The King of glory is coming in.
But you cannot skip the valley to get to the mountain. So if you've spent years swallowing your grief, numbing your feelings, and performing okay-ness, the invitation today is simple: learn the way of the Psalms. Lament out loud. Bring your real grief to God — not the sanitized version. And trust that the same God who inspired Psalm 22 also inspired Psalm 24, and that He is faithfully writing your story toward that same destination.
Take a Next Step
If this message stirred something in you, here are a few ways to keep going:
Read Psalms 22, 23, and 24 in one sitting this week. Notice the movement.
Try a daily Psalm rhythm — even one Psalm a day will reshape your prayer life.
Tell someone what you're actually grieving. A friend, a pastor, a counselor. Lament was never meant to be done alone.
Join us this Sunday as we continue our sermon series through the Psalms.