July 23, 2026 - Lamentations 1-2

We’re not yet finished with Jeremiah.  For so many years he had prophesied the fall of Judah and Jerusalem and the people’s exile to Babylon.  He was one of the very few who were left by the Babylonians in Judah and now he looks out over the city of Jerusalem and laments, “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).  One who had once been so great among the nations now lies in ruins, the people stripped from their lands and taken into exile in a far away, foreign land.  Jeremiah continues, “She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies” (1:2).  The people had continuously looked for compatriots, for friends, for help in all the wrong places.  And it’s not as if the Lord had not been patient.  For decades, no, for centuries, he had sent his prophets to warn Israel and to lovingly call them back to himself.  But they would not.

“Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and wandering all the precious things that were hers from days of old” (1:7).  Once so blessed.  Once possessing such precious things.  Once the apple of God’s eye.  We might, with Israel, cry out our lament:

O for the happy hour

When God will hear our cry,

And send, with a reviving power,

His Spirit from on high.

We meet, we sing, we pray,

We listen to the word,

In vain--we see no cheering ray,

No cheering voice is heard.   -- George W. Bethune (1843)

But, then, with great assurance, knowing that our hope is found in God alone, we plead:

Come, with Thy power divine,

Spirit of life and love;

Then shall our people all be Thine,

Our church like that above.   -- George W. Bethune (1843)