When police kill an unarmed man, grief and anger often arrive together, and both can harden. Grief can sink into despair or numbness. Anger can turn into contempt, or into a slogan that never becomes care for anyone. Scripture offers another path. Lament is prayer that names the wrong plainly, asks God how long, and keeps talking to him while the wound is still open. Practiced over time, it can move a hurting community toward faithful action without forcing anyone to stop grieving first.
This guide is built around that practice. You can work through it alone over several evenings or in a single long group session. It draws on a conversation in which Lisa Fields spoke with Pastor Charlie Dates during the week Chicago marched over the killing of Laquan McDonald. Nothing in it requires you to share what you feel. Every written exercise can stay private.
What not to rush past
Churches often answer a killing in ways that sound faithful and still wound people. One is the call to just pray, said in a way that really means stop talking about it. Another is the warning not to get political, offered before anyone has wept. A third is the demand to wait for all the facts, used to shut down sorrow rather than to seek the truth. Each skips the step Scripture refuses to skip, which is telling God the truth about what happened and what it did to us.
There is also a quieter danger. Some people watch the footage again and again, scroll for hours, and carry the images into sleep. Pastor Dates described seeing the McDonald video in four words: “You could hardly watch.” That is honest, and it is also a boundary worth keeping. Bearing witness to an injustice does not require replaying a man’s death. If you lead a group, do not show the video. Assume someone in the room has seen enough.
Before going further, take a minute to notice where you are. You might be exhausted, furious, afraid for someone you love, unsure what you feel, or ashamed that you feel little at all. None of these keeps you out of this practice.
Psalm 13: a prayer that does not pretend
Psalm 13 is poetry, and it is a lament. It is not a promise that grief ends on a schedule. It shows what a faithful person may say to God while the trouble is still real. Read it aloud slowly, if you can. It opens this way:
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?
Psalm 13:2 keeps going: “How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?” The phrase “take counsel in my soul” means something like turning a problem over and over inside yourself with no relief. Many people know that feeling the week after a killing.
Before you interpret the psalm, observe it. Work through these on paper or aloud:
- Count how many times the psalmist asks “how long.” What does repetition do in a prayer that a single question would not?
- Notice who the psalmist accuses. The complaint is directed at God, not only at the enemy. What does it mean that Scripture keeps a prayer like that?
- Find the petition in Psalm 13:3. He asks God to “lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.” What is he actually asking for?
- Read the last two verses. Psalm 13:5 says, “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.” Notice the tenses: past trust and future joy. Has the trouble been resolved by verse 5, or is he choosing where to stand while it continues?
The psalm does not pretend the enemy has gone away. Its turn toward trust is real, but it is not a cure. That matters for a congregation. Lament does not give God a deadline for your healing, and it does not give you one either.
Naming the wrong without editing the dead
Lament begins by naming what happened. After police killings, that naming is often bent in two directions at once. Some people rush to make the dead man a saint, and others rush to make him deserve it. Pastor Dates did neither. He described McDonald as a teenager who was allegedly harassing businesses and carrying a three-inch blade, and he said McDonald was walking away from a police car when an officer fired 16 shots. Then he told the part of the story that rarely makes the news. McDonald had been a ward of the state since his early years. Dates said, “And he is part of that group of the least, the lost and the left out, somebody whom the church should care about.”
His moral judgment comes in one plain sentence: “he clearly was struggling with some issues, but that was no reason for him to be gunned down.” The church does not need a perfect victim before it can grieve. It also should not hide hard facts to make its grief easier to defend. Honest lament can hold both.
This is the first concrete move of the practice. Write two or three sentences about the killing that weighs on you, using only what you actually know. Name the person if you can. Leave out what you suspect but cannot confirm. Then add one sentence about who he was beyond the moment of his death. That small discipline guards against two things that corrode grief: rumor and erasure.
Where the anger goes
Anger at injustice is not sin in itself. The question is where it goes. Scripture gives at least three directions worth noticing.
The first is toward weeping with others. Romans 12:15 says, “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.” The verse comes in a list of commands about life together in the church. It assumes that some people around you are weeping, and it asks you to join them before you explain anything to them.
The second is toward God, before any plan. When Nehemiah heard that Jerusalem lay broken, he did not begin by drawing up a repair schedule. Nehemiah 1:4 says, “I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven.” Notice the words “certain days.” His grief took time, and the book treats that time as part of the work, not a delay before it.
The third is toward justice. Amos 5:24 reads, “But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” In the KJV, “judgment” here means justice, the setting right of what has been made wrong. The verse comes right after God rejects Israel’s festivals and songs, so it is aimed at worshipers who sing while the poor are crushed. Pastor Dates echoed it when he described his church’s plans: “we wanna call for justice to be done, to roll down like a stream.”
Watch what Dates’s anger did with that call. A number of churches planned to march to police headquarters, and he was clear about the purpose: “we’re going literally to pray.” He said “the police need help,” and then, “And our mayor needs help.” This is a grieving pastor praying for the officials he was confronting. He spoke bluntly about the officer: “He has a corroded nature. He needs to be converted, his heart needs to be changed.” Yet even that sentence ends in a hope for conversion rather than a wish for destruction. Anger that still prays for the one it confronts has not been emptied of force. It has been kept from becoming hatred.
You do not have to feel ready to pray for the officer. Psalm 13 shows that some prayers start with complaint and stay there for a while. Simply notice whether your anger has a direction yet.
The practice: writing a lament in four movements
Psalm 13 moves through four parts: addressing God, complaint, petition, and trust. Use that shape to write your own lament. Give it twenty to thirty minutes. Alone, find a quiet place. In a group, give everyone silence to write and make clear that no one will be asked to read.
- Address. Begin by speaking to God directly, by whatever name you use with him. Not about him. To him.
- Complaint. Write your own “how long.” Name the killing using the facts you wrote earlier. Name what it has done to you, your family, or your neighborhood. Do not soften it for an audience. There is no audience.
- Petition. Ask God for something specific. It might be justice in a court case, comfort for a family, protection for your sons, or the ability to sleep. You may also ask for the conversion of hearts, including ones you find hard to pray for.
- Trust, if you can reach it. Write one sentence about what you know of God that is still true tonight. If you cannot write it honestly, leave it blank. A lament that stops at petition is still a prayer. Many psalms take longer than Psalm 13 to arrive at trust, and Psalm 88 never does.
Keep what you write. Read it again in a week. Some people find their complaint has sharpened rather than eased, and that is not failure. Others find that a sentence they could not write the first time has come within reach.
For those leading groups: after the writing time, invite but do not request sharing. One way is to ask whether anyone would like to read a single line, from any movement, without comment from the room. Afterward, thank the person and move on. Do not counsel someone in front of others or correct their theology in the moment. If a person goes quiet or weeps, let the silence sit.
From lament toward one faithful act
Lament is not the end of the church’s response, but it is the ground the response stands on. Pastor Dates watched thousands march in Chicago, many of them young, and he noticed the gap between their passion and the church. Of many young protesters, he said, “their zeal is strong, but it’s rather uninformed both by history and by the biblical record.” He reached for Romans 10:2, where Paul says of his own people, “For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.” Paul writes that sentence after telling them he prays for their salvation. Dates applies the phrase by analogy, and he keeps Paul’s tone. He marched that day himself. His concern was not that the young were angry. It was that their anger had too little to stand on.
Lament supplies some of that footing. It ties grief to God’s character, and it keeps anger answerable to him. Dates’s remedy was relational. He asked older believers to share life and stories with younger people, he said, “so that the unity is not fabricated.” Elders who have lamented before can teach the young how to grieve without losing their faith. Younger believers can remind elders that the wound is still open.
So let the last step of this practice be small. Choose one act within your reach in the coming week. Examples: pray by name for the grieving family. Learn the actual facts of a local case before you speak about it. Ask an elder what sustained them through an earlier injustice, or ask a younger believer what they have seen. Join your church in public prayer. Dates also named a long, unglamorous kind of faithfulness: “start serving and caring about those who’ve been forgotten and looked over.” One act is enough. Grief does not have to justify itself by producing a movement.
Questions for discussion or reflection
Take these slowly. In a group, the earlier ones help a room settle before the later ones press harder. Anyone can pass.
- When news of a police killing reaches you, what do you usually do first: look away, argue, go numb, pray, or something else? Where do you think that habit came from?
- Psalm 13 complains to God directly. Have you been taught that this kind of prayer is disrespectful? What in the psalm itself supports or challenges that teaching?
- Dates named both the hard facts about Laquan McDonald and the plain judgment that his killing was wrong. Which of those two are you more tempted to leave out, and why?
- Nehemiah “mourned certain days” before he began rebuilding. What might your community lose if it moves straight to strategy? What might it lose if it never moves at all?
- Dates prayed for the police and the mayor while confronting them. What would it take for you to pray for someone you hold responsible, without pretending the wrong was small?
- Who across a generational line from you could you sit with this month, to hear how they have carried grief like this, or to tell them how you are carrying it?
When grief is more than grief
Repeated exposure to violence, especially against people who look like you or your children, can leave real trauma. Signs include trouble sleeping, intrusive images, constant dread, or a flat numbness that does not lift. Pastor Dates noted that some people in Chicago “never hear gunshots,” while others live with violence close at hand. Those who live close to it often carry more than one death at once. Jude 3 teaches that seeking therapy is not a failure of faith, and that God works through trained counselors and clinicians. Lament and professional care work together. Neither replaces the other.
If your grief has turned into thoughts of ending your life, or if you are worried about someone else, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US, at any hour. Tell a pastor or a trusted friend as well. Leaders who notice someone struggling should follow up privately after the session, not in front of the group.
Psalm 13 ends with a song, but the psalmist is still the one who began by asking how long. Bring your lament back to God next week if the wrong still stands. Pastor Dates closed his conversation with Lisa Fields by asking for the most basic thing a grieving city can ask of the wider church: “So pray for us.” Pray that way for your own city too, and keep the people you love company while you do.