April 18, 2016
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

Bitter but Blessed

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Opening Prayer

Holy Father, You work through human agents like me, who feel of little consequence and limited ability. Continue to use me, I pray.

Read Lamentations 3:1-33

[1] I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the LORD’s wrath. [2] He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light; [3] indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long. [4] He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones. [5] He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. [6] He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead. [7] He has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains. [8] Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. [9] He has barred my way with blocks of stone; he has made my paths crooked. [10] Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding, [11] he dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help. [12] He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows. [13] He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. [14] I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day long. [15] He has filled me with bitter herbs and given me gall to drink. [16] He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust. [17] I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. [18] So I say, “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD.” [19] I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. [20] I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. [21] Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: [22] Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. [23] They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. [24] I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” [25] The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; [26] it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. [27] It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. [28] Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him. [29] Let him bury his face in the dust- there may yet be hope. [30] Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace. [31] For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. [32] Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. [33] For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.

Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Reflect

“Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, There is no shadow of turning with thee” (Thomas O. Chisholm, 1866-1960).

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 valor; his condition is thus the more poignant. Earlier commentators frequently saw him as pointing forward to Christ, and there are some parallels.

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. The whole chapter seems to have a different feel and is seen as the center 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 (33). It is only ever a temporary response to particular circumstances, in this case his people’s sin. It will not last forever (31-32). What will survive is his unfailing love–the 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 (Heb. 12:6), although this 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. 

Apply

Reflect on your own failures, and thank God that his love and faithfulness mean that he will not let you go.

Closing prayer

Lord, in You alone is true hope. I look to you alone in the midst of the catastrophes of life. Shed Your amazing grace on me.

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