As the U.S. continues its gradual return to a new normal in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic,

many are grieving the toll the last two years have taken on our families, on our churches, and on our communities.

As we look back, it can be tempting to feel a sense of despair at not only the loss of human

life, but also the widespread division and disunity related to the pandemic, even within the

church. In our interview today, I'm talking with Mark Rogop about what it looks like to lament

the COVID-19 pandemic, and how that

lament can help us heal, both individually and as churches. Mark serves as pastor of College

Park Church in Indianapolis and is the author of Dark Cloud's Deep Mercy, Discovering

the Grace of Lament, as well as the brand new Dark Cloud's Deep

Mercy devotional journal from Crossway. Let's get started. Well, Mark, thank you so much for

joining me again on the Crossway podcast. Matt, it's great to be with you. Thanks for having me on again.

So I think the past two years or so have really, if I can put it this way, disabused a lot of us of the idea that we can control our world and what happens to us, whether it's the COVID-19 pandemic that we're hopefully just coming out of now, the increasing polarization

and disunity we see in our country and even around the world, and even more recently,

global conflict that has just been incredibly sad and scary to watch. All of that and more

have really contributed, I think, to a sense that our world is chaotic

and out of control, and we have very little control in that. Have you wrestled with those

kinds of feelings over the last couple of years? Yeah, absolutely. And I think every human being

on the planet has, and that's part of the challenge of what we're all dealing with, is we're all

grieving in various ways with a whole host of things at the exact same time. I think before

the global pandemic and everything else that we've dealt with over the last two and a half

to now three years or so, you know, or two years, I should say, it's, you know, usually grief has

been something that has been individually located. So somebody loses a spouse or a child or is

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