Every once in a while you read something that momentarily stops your breath. Even if it’s something you’ve seen or heard before, when you stumble across it and view it from a new perspective, you can’t understand how you’ve missed the magnitude of placing these few words in this particular order.
That was my reaction this morning.
After reading through the Bible this year (3/4 completed), I’ve followed Israel’s meteoric rise from the depths of slavery to becoming the wealthiest nation on earth, and losing it all in utter destruction. After investing so much time into studying their lives and choices, it’s difficult (for me, at least) not to feel an emotional connection to their story. Just last week I finished the book of Jeremiah, and watched Israel become arrogant and proud, only to end in Solomon’s temple being devastated and the people being carried off into exile in Babylon.
That’s the likely point where Lamentations takes place. It’s a poem from the point of view after having just watched your home, family friends be torn apart.
My eyes are spent with weeping;
my stomach churns;
my bile is poured out to the ground
because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
because infants and babies faint
in the streets of the city.They cry to their mothers,
“Where is bread and wine?”
as they faint like a wounded man
in the streets of the city,
as their life is poured out
on their mothers’ bosom.What can I say for you, to what compare you,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your ruin is vast as the sea;
who can heal you?
Lamentations 2:11-13
In the midst of that sadness, there is hope. Even though the author is weighed down by this despair, he can still see the larger picture and the sovereignty of God.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
l his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23
There’s something absolutely breathtaking about contrasting the devastation of sin with the glory of God, and watching a broken people turn back to Him.
