Hello Sweet friends,
Today’s Reading … Jeremiah 51-52, Lamentations 1-5, Ezekiel 1-4
I just watched, and really enjoyed the Bible Project video on Lamentations. I recommend taking the time to check it out! Here are a few thoughts from what I learned:
The book of Lamentations is a poetic reflection on the siege of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon. This is not the only place that we see this type of literature in the Bible. Lament poems can also be found in Psalms 10,63,69,74,79. Their purpose is to protest, process emotion and voice confusion. It is liberating to reflect on the recognition that Scripture makes around the importance of expressing pain. The book of Lamentations provides a wonderful model for us in times of grief. We are to take all of our emotions to God, he can handle them and will bring His supernatural peace to our hearts in the midst of the chaos.
The book of Lamentations is very ordered and linear in structure. This is a stark contrast to the disorder and pain that is rampant in the lives of the Israelites during this time. There are 5 poems of lament, 4 of which are acrostics, alphabet poems. The first poem focuses on the grief and shame of Israel, here referred to as Lady Zion. The second poem deals with the Fall of Jerusalem and God’s wrath. This poem reminds us that while God is slow to anger, eventually, He will judge human evil. The third poem is a cry of the ones suffering. It is in this poem that we see a seedbed of hope nestled in the pain of God’s judgment. “Because of the Lord’s covenant faithfulness, we do not perish. His mercies never fail; they are new every morning. How great is your faithfulness, O God. So I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my inheritance, therefore I will put my hope in Him’” (Lamentations 3:22-24). The hope is that if God is consistent enough to bring His justice on Israel’s evil, then He will also be consistent with His covenant promises and not allow evil and sin to have the last word. The fourth poem contrasts the beauty of the past life in Israel with the pain and destruction of life in exile. The final poem, and the only one not written as an acrostic, is a communal prayer begging God for mercy. Much like the book of Job, the poet does not offer tidy resolution, tied up with a bow. Rather, we are left with the tension that God is the eternal King, ever present and faithful, even though Israel’s current circumstances make it feel as though He is nowhere to be found.
The book of Lamentations shows that lament and prayer are an important part of faith in a broken world. It gives us an invitation and a model to reach out to God in our times of suffering and confusion. We are to confess our grief and shame, accept the consequences, cry out to God in our pain, reflect on God’s past faithfulness and finally rest in His eternal goodness even when our circumstances do not seem good to us. When we come to God in our brokenness, He will be faithful to bind us up in His grace.
In this powerful book we combine our themes of “Keeping God First,” and “Facing Adversity.” What a beautiful choice we make when we pray for the Holy Spirit to empower us to keep God first in the midst of adversity, even when we cannot see the Hand of God. In Romans 8 Jesus teaches us, “Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans, and He who searches our hearts understands the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit of God intercedes for God’s people according to the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose.”
In the midst of adversity, I pray that we would keep God first by remembering that we have a hope that is unseen and that the Holy Spirit is interceding for us in ways that we can not comprehend. Ultimately, God’s plans will succeed. We can rest in that while we wait.
Love you all,
Kinsee
“so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return empty, but accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it”(Isaiah 55:11).
