Read
There Is Still Hope
The Prophet Speaks:
1I have suffered much
because God was angry.
2He chased me into a dark place,
where no light could enter.
3I am the only one he punishes
over and over again,
without ever stopping.
4God caused my skin and flesh
to waste away,
and he crushed my bones.
5He attacked and surrounded me
with hardships and trouble;
6he forced me to sit in the dark
like someone long dead.
7God built a fence around me
that I cannot climb over,
and he chained me down.
8Even when I shouted
and prayed for help,
he refused to listen.
9God put big rocks in my way
and made me follow
a crooked path.
10God was like a bear or a lion
waiting in ambush for me;
11he dragged me from the road,
then tore me to shreds.
12God took careful aim
and shot his arrows
13straight through my heart.
14I am a joke to everyone—
no one ever stops
making fun of me.
15God has turned my life sour.
16He made me eat gravel
and rubbed me in the dirt.
17I cannot find peace
or remember happiness.
18I tell myself, “I am finished!
I can't count on the Lord
to do anything for me.”
19Just thinking of my troubles
and my lonely wandering
makes me miserable.
20That's all I ever think about,
and I am depressed.
21Then I remember something
that fills me with hope.
22The Lord's kindness never fails!
If he had not been merciful,
we would have been destroyed.
23The Lord can always be trusted
to show mercy each morning.
24Deep in my heart I say,
“The Lord is all I need;
I can depend on him!”
25The Lord is kind to everyone
who trusts and obeys him.
26It is good to wait patiently
for the Lord to save us.
27When we are young,
it is good to struggle hard
28and to sit silently alone,
if this is what
the Lord intends.
29Being rubbed in the dirt
can teach us a lesson;
30we can also learn from insults
and hard knocks.
31The Lord won't always reject us!
32He causes a lot of suffering,
but he also has pity
because of his great love.
33The Lord doesn't enjoy
sending grief or pain.
Reflect
The mood changes. The speaker here is a man who in his own personal pain mirrors something of the pain of Jerusalem. The Hebrew word for man here implies a man of strength or valour; this makes his condition all the more moving. It is debated whether he is to be identified with the narrator of the earlier chapters. Earlier commentators frequently saw him as pointing forward to Christ, and there are some parallels (especially vv 28,29).
This chapter offers a sense of hope that is absent elsewhere in Lamentations. It is not surprising that verses 22 and 23 are perhaps the best known in the whole book. Because the whole chapter seems to have a different feel, some have argued that it does not belong here.
Others have seen it as the centre of the book’s argument. The author knew that grief does not follow a straightforward course. There are moments of deep despair and blackness, but there are also shafts of light; sometimes God seems a million miles away, but at other times we recover a sense of his presence and receive comfort.
God may have acted in anger, but anger is not God’s natural disposition. Judgment, as Isaiah points out, is his ‘strange work’ (Isa 28:21). He does not bring it willingly (v 33). It is only ever a temporary response to particular circumstances, in this case his people’s sin. It will not last forever (vv 31,32). What will survive is his unfailing love – the Hebrew word in verse 32 (chesed) implies covenant faithfulness. From the perspective of the new covenant, we can be assured that God’s very nature is love (1 John 4:16). It is those he loves whom he disciplines (Hebrews 12:6).
But discipline is not a word we can hear in the depths of pain, still less one that we should offer too readily to others in their suffering.
Respond
Thank you, Father that your love and faithfulness mean that you will never let me go, however much I fail you.
First used in Encounter with God April-June 2015, written by John Grayston, copyright Scripture Union. Used with kind permission.
John Grayston
John is now retired after 37 years on the Scripture Union England and Wales staff, but still writes, teaches and preaches. He has two children and seven grandchildren and his hobbies are skiing, hill-walking, photography and gardening.