August 3, 2024 - Lamentations 1-5

I need to step back to Lamentations, which I inadvertently skipped over.  Actually, they are “The Lamentations of Jeremiah,” which he uttered as he looked out over the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.  Jeremiah’s ministry began hard, continued with many challenges, and ended with disaster.  The prophet declared, “How lonely sits the city that was full of people!  How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations!  She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave” (1:1).  Well, just as the Lord’s prophet said, so it has happened.  The book of Lamentations, of course, is full of lament.  The city is destroyed.  The temple has been burned to the ground.  The people have been carried into exile.  Jeremiah sees all this, and though he knew it was coming and prophesied about it, still his heart breaks.  That’s the heart of a true shepherd:  he tells the hard truth, but he takes no sordid delight in what he must proclaim.  He cries out:  “Look, O Lord, and see, for I am despised.  Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?  Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the Lord inflicted on the day of his fierce anger" (1:11-12).

Jeremiah understood the righteousness of God’s judgment and its necessity.  Still, his sorrow was almost unspeakable.  The heart of a shepherd!  “For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed” (1:16).  But here’s his hope:  “For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love” (3:31,32).  The shepherd's hope!  What other hymn might we sing, this morning, than:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;

there is no shadow of turning with Thee;

Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;

as Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.

Great is Thy faithfulness!

Great is Thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see;

all I have needed Thy hand hath provided:

great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!   --Thomas O. Chisholm (1923)