Vittorio Ristorante & Pizzeria was a quaint, family-owned neighborhood eatery tucked just off Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. When my wife and I visit Los Angeles to see our daughter, our trip wasn’t complete without a visit to Vittorio’s. The garlic rolls were divine, the pizzas a culinary masterpiece—and I can taste the chicken parmesan just thinking about it.
I said was a quaint place, and indeed it was. Vittorio, Park Lane Cleaner, Knoll’s Pharmacy, Ronny’s Market, and Palisades Animal Clinic are all gone now, connecting businesses burned to rubble when fire destroyed 85% of the city’s residential and business community.
We found Vittorio’s when we took our daughter to college in fall 2021. We had five days to explore LA before freshman orientation began and visited the shops of Rodeo Drive, the Farmers Market, the Griffith Observatory, Hollywood Walk of Fame, the iconic Mann’s Chinese Theatre, the Getty Villa, Santa Monica Pier, Malibu, and more.
Vittorio’s was never convenient but always worth the effort. Unfortunately, the community in which it was nestled now resembles a bombed-out wasteland. Watching the news, seeing raging fires consuming places we’d come to love, feels surreal. The destruction feels deeply personal. All I can offer the people of Los Angeles from 2,000 miles away are my prayers, and my lament.
Lament is a raw, passionate expression of grief or sorrow, often directed as a prayer to God. It is a key way for Christians to process grief and seek God’s guidance in the midst of pain.
Chris Turner
For the first time, I’m studying the book of Lamentations, discovering the deep significance of lament. Lamentations is a gut-wrenching, traumatic journey filled with genocide, physical and sexual abuse, starvation, cannibalism, abandonment, slavery, and the utter devastation of Jerusalem. The Babylonians may have been the agents of destruction, but God is clearly the source of judgment. “It is the Lord who did just as he planned. He has fulfilled the promises of disaster he made long ago. He has destroyed Jerusalem without mercy. He has caused her enemies to gloat over her and has given them power over her” (Lamentations 2:17).
The poet captures the devastation like an embedded war reporter, narrating the anguish of a city in ruins. His vivid imagery draws the reader into the depths of despair, as he seeks God’s mercy and begins to understand the purpose of God’s wrath.
Imagine the poet a disheveled lone figure on a dark stage, illuminated by a single spotlight, his body collapsed against the remnants of Jerusalem’s once-mighty walls. His voice is heavy with pain as he lifts his soot-smudged face to heaven and begs God for mercy.
He then turns to confront us, the audience, directly. “Does it mean nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see if there is any suffering like mine” (Lamentations 1:12).
The poet becomes the Jewish man robbed and attacked by bandits on the road to Jericho, while we the audience, are the travelers who pass without stopping. He isn’t asking us to fix his pain or condone his sins; he is begging us to feel his anguish and join him in lament before God.
“Does it mean nothing to you, all you who pass by?” It is the question the world asks of Christ followers today. How many among us, besieged by a world filled with tragedies—fires, floods, famine, wars, genocide, disease, human trafficking, persecution, poverty—dare to confront that question?
It is an uncomfortable confrontation, but one we need. I fear that among American evangelicals, the ability to lament with those in deep trial is eroding. Whether due to misplaced piety, excessive materialism, political divisions, or sheer inconvenience, we risk becoming desensitized to the suffering around us.
Ecclesiastes 7:2-3 tells us that it is “Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties … for sadness has a refining influence on us.” Lamenting alongside others equips us to see the world through Christ’s eyes—full of brokenness but also in love. It reminds us of our shared humanity, our collective desperation for God’s mercy, and our solitary hope in the gospel.
The world needs our lament. Not just for those who suffer, but for ourselves, to refine and soften our hearts through grief.
So if you would, please, pause and offer a lament for Los Angeles. B&R
