The last post, I ended with a passage from the book of Lamentations:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is His faithfulness!
Lamentations 3:22-26
The Lord is my portion and inheritance; because of this, I will hope in him.
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
This beautiful passage sits in the middle of one of the saddest stories of the Bible.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. Jeremiah is also known as The Weeping Prophet because he did exactly that. He cried; a lot.
Lamentations is written shortly after the fall of Jerusalem. The city of God, the capital city of Israel had been destroyed! God had been warning the people of Israel for many years of impending doom if they continued to ignore God’s laws. Humans in general tend to go their own way, so God simply wiped the people of Israel out when they continued to defy God. Most were killed; thousands were captured and forced to march hundreds of miles to Babylon where they would serve as slaves. A few poor and insignificant people remained in the burned-out city, the prophet Jeremiah being one of them.
This is the context of Lamentations.
This book contains only five chapters, but what sorrow is ensconced in its words. Here, Jeremiah vents his anger, pain, confusion, and grief. It is a lament. A form of protest. He is venting to process emotion.
Imagine yourself in Jeremiah’s sandals: you walk through the city, everything you’ve ever known is destroyed. Ransacked, burned, completely wasted. The dead are lying everywhere, the stench is overwhelming. You begin to question God’s goodness.
Suffering forces us to ask questions about God’s character and promises. This is exactly what Jeremiah is doing. Asking God hard questions. “Where are you? Why has this happened?”
In the middle of his ranting, Jeremiah concludes that: “If God keeps his word and brings destruction, then surely He will keep his word and restore us again.” Enter Lamentations 3:22-26
God’s judgement is the seed bed for hope.
Chapter five is an impassioned prayer for mercy. Suffering in silence is not a virtue in the book of Lamentations. God’s people are not asked to deny their emotions, but voice their protests, to vent their feelings and pour it all out before God.
Process the emotions. Then remember His promises and praise this wonderful, awesome God. King David in the Psalms did this as well. He processed emotion, then remembered God’s promises. Our anger, pain and confusion doesn’t scare God. In fact, he welcomes it, because he is our burden bearer.
In conclusion, the book ends with a tension between God’s sovereignty and Jeremiah’s current reality: the city in ruins. People in unspeakable suffering.
Prayer, lament, and grief are a crucial part of God’s people in a broken world. There is no neat ending in Lamentations – it’s messy and questioning. Much like our own stories. But take note of Jeremiah’s beautiful faith words in chapter three. He had resilient faith. He remembered past faithfulness and knew it was only a matter of time before God would once again restore, heal, and bless Israel.
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is His faithfulness!
Lamentations 3:22-26
The Lord is my portion and inheritance; because of this, I will hope in him.
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
Process emotion.
And, don’t forget to remember past faithfulness.
Some of this is derived from an overview of the book Lamentations by BibleProject.com