Lamentations

So I've been reading from Lamentations for the last couple of days. Today's reading is found here. I was having a hard time getting a good grip on Lamentations so I checked it out in a couple of places. This site, gave me a good introduction to what Lamentations is all about.

The book of Lamentations has been badly served by the title it carries in our English versions. For it is not a collection of breast-beating self-pitying poems, a mere lamenting of the sorry state of Jerusalem and its inhabitants. It is rather the record of a Hebrew poet's coping with crisis, a deeply reflected proposal for the handling of grief.
Its theological position is quite subtle: it does not take just one perspective and it does not recommend a single solution. It begins with the reality of disaster and it concludes neither with cheap grace nor with easy hope but with the bitter possibility that the people of God may now have become the ex-people of God, that God may indeed have this time finally rejected Israel (5:22). And yet, despite its unwillingness to affirm blandly that all manner of thing will be well, at its end it does not leave its readers at the same point of despair with which it opened; for at its very midpoint (3:22-33) it has expressed the confidence that the mercies of Yahweh never come to an end, they are new every morning.

Lamentations isn't just a sad weepy book! Cool eh! :)

In Lamentations we find confidence:

19Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
20My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.
21But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

22The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
23they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24"The LORD is my portion," says my soul,
"therefore I will hope in him."

25The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
26It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.
27It is good for a man that he bear
the yoke in his youth.

The authour of Lamentations has such hope and confidence in the Lord. It is just SO neat to read. Israel has been SUCH a big disappointment to God. God should surely leave her desolate for all the evil that she has done. And yet.... he doesn't. The authour knows that God is better than that. That God, even in his holiness, still shows mercy. God will not hide from those who seek him.

31For the Lord will not
cast off forever,
32but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
33for he does not willingly afflict
or grieve the children of men.

So what should our response to such a God as this?

40Let us test and examine our ways,
and return to the LORD!
41Let us lift up our hearts and hands
to God in heaven:
42"We have transgressed and rebelled,
and you have not forgiven. ...
55"I called on your name, O LORD,
from the depths of the pit;
56you heard my plea, 'Do not close
your ear to my cry for help!'
57You came near when I called on you;
you said, 'Do not fear!'

This is indeed what we must do when God chastises and disciplines us. We must examine what we are doing. We must repent. We must call upon him for our salvation, for our help. He is the only one who can do anything to make it better again. We do not have to fear him. God will answer our call to him.

The authour finishes his poem with these words:

19But you, O LORD, reign forever;
your throne endures to all generations.
20Why do you forget us forever,
why do you forsake us for so many days?
21Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored!
Renew our days as of old--
22unless you have utterly rejected us,
and you remain exceedingly angry with us.

He calls to God. He knows that it all hangs on what God wants to do. God can restore his people, or he can remain angry at them and continue to see them disciplined. But his trust in God remains. He truly knows the the Lord God reigns forever, and that God can restore his people.

I find that comforting in a way. Granted, I have NEVER been put through the pain and sorrow that the whole nation of Israel had to go through. I have though, felt the Lord's discipline on my life. I've had things go badly where I knew that I just HAD to turn to God for things to get even remotely better. And sometimes it took time and dedication on my part to truly keep calling to God and truly keep repenting of the nastiness that I do. It's good to read poems like Lamentations. I know that even in the midst of suffering....one can still trust that God knows what he is doing. That God still does reign supreme and that he can restore us to himself again. That is comforting.