Proper 8: First Reading, Lamentations 3:22-33                        

Lamentations 3:22-33

Dangerous title for these days. I get it. But stick with me and I hope you will understand the need for the title. In the course of the years that I have been in ministry, both in hospice work and as part of a church staff, I have found a group of people whom I find great joy and value in knowing. It’s a special group, which is not to say that I don’t find value in all my interactions. But this special group isn’t marked by educational attainment, financial savvy or gender or skin color. In fact the absolute wonder and beauty of this group of people in my life, stems in part from the fact that there are people from all these categories and more who make it up. No, the mark of this precious group of souls is that they have suffered, and many have greatly suffered. 

Jeremiah writes the Lamentations in response to the great suffering of his people as they were pressed into exile by a foreign power and quite literally dashed against stones. Darkness of the sort that has marked human existence in ways that one wonders whether or not life has any real purpose or value. But as his people were degraded and deported, there was in Jeremiah’s soul, planted from the outside, a light that broke apart that grave darkness and instilled Jeremiah, and eventually his people with hope. Great, unbreakable hope.

Our reading today takes us to a place where God’s rescue by grace is made evident and could only be seen in the stark relief of near abandonment. God “does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men” (Lam. 3:33). There are seasons where grief and affliction come to God’s children in the Scriptures and to us. And while it is a necessary element in God’s response to our sin, He takes no joy in it.

Read all of chapter three of Lamentations. And taste the degradation and anguish in the heart of this great prophet. Then step back in wonder at the tenderness of the God who saves. Who always saves His people.

Father, for Light that comes and shatters the darkness which we have caused, we thank you. Amen!