Lamentations 1:1-3:33
Yesterday, I encouraged us all to contemplate the desolation of Jerusalem, to get a real sense of the devastation wrought by the Babylonian conquest. The book of Lamentations should help us do just that, if we let it. Listen to the words. Visualize the desolation. Put yourself into the picture. Feel the pathos. Share in the lamentation. Alongside the author, grieve and mourn over sin and its consequences. And alongside the author, find hope in the LORD:
But this I call to mind,
Lamentations 3:21-24
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in Him.”
One more thing…
In his book, Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortlund devotes chapter 15 to Lamentations and more specifically, to Lamentations 3:33, which he notes is at the exact center of the book:
… [the Lord] does not afflict from His heart
Ezekiel 3:33
or grieve the children of men.
Ortlund recognizes that the implicit truth here is that the Lord does indeed afflict, that He is the source of Judah’s suffering, but that the explicit truth is that He does not do so from His heart, that He would very much prefer not to have to cause such suffering. It seems to me that we would do well to think long and hard about both the implicit and explicit truths here.