Walking with God Through the Valley

Walking with God Through the Valley: Recovering the Purpose of Biblical Lament is a carefully woven tapestry centered on an undervalued but oh-so essential thread of life—lament. Dr. Young skillfully amplifies the promised healing and liberation revealed when we lean into personal and communal lament. Readers will see that recovering biblical lament avails us to the healing, humility, and hindsight our soul longs to posture.

May Young’s book speaks to the heart, the head, and the hands. This book shows how lament addresses a profound need in the church and in our lives to share our deepest and hardest feelings with God. Young combines meaningful stories of pain, loss, and hope with solid biblical insights about the history and theology of lament, its place in the Bible, and its purpose in our lives today. By offering reflection questions and suggestions for individual and corporate lament practices, every reader is encouraged to participate. This book will be a valuable gift to students and congregations alike!

In this stimulating and accessible study, May Young explores the misunderstood and underused genre of lament in the Bible with an eye to making lament come to life for both individuals and the corporate church as a whole. Drawing on her own personal experiences of loss, frustration, and anger, she shows that laments are not merely about ‘sadness,’ but that they can be a rich resource in many different situations, including sin and repentance, doubt, anger, loneliness, sickness and pain, death and loss. Her title well captures the running thread that she traces through the laments: that God walks with us throughout, and we are not alone. I highly recommend this book!

Dr. May Young has given us a rare book on lament in the Old Testament which is biblically grounded and pastorally wise. She writes not only as a scholar of the subject but also as a practitioner who shares movingly from her own experiences and those of fellow sufferers. Every spiritual leader should read this book to walk more closely with God in times of trouble!

This book is a captivating introduction to the concept of biblical lament. May Young achieves a brilliant feat in explaining to the reader—especially the reader unfamiliar with this concept—lament’s nature, function, and purpose and the need for the practice of lament in the church today. Speaking from her heart, May shares snippets of her own experience and that of others in order to show how lament can bring people closer to God. Her pastoral concern and desire to help believers discover and embrace the power of lament in the midst of incomprehensible suffering is noticeable throughout the book.

This is the book on lament that we’ve been waiting for and need. May Young merges her extensive study on biblical lament with profoundly personal applications for the individual and the community. The practice of lament is the missing link for many in healing from suffering, trauma, and pain. Young guides us through an understanding of biblical lament as a way forward, a guide to process with God the injustices and sorrows of life. Her work is timely, honest, and accessible.

May Young’s Walking with God Through the Valley makes a distinctive contribution to the literature on lament. Her sensitive, comprehensive look at the many faces of sorrow and suffering offers a fresh, accessible resource for dealing with times of anguish, both in our worshipping communities and in private devotions. Dr. Young’s scholarship and depth of personal experience provide an insightful guide for dealing with the raw realities of life in a way that brings renewed understanding of God’s goodness and steadfast love. Her book will benefit and encourage readers in both church and academy.

With a distinctive combination of academic expertise and pastoral sensitivity, Dr. May Young offers the church a great gift: an invitation and guide to the practice of lament. This is a clear, readable, and compassionate book, and it will offer comfort to those who are grieving and wisdom for those who walk alongside them.