LAMENTATIONS 1:1-6, 3:19-26
The book of
Lamentations articulates the anguish of the Hebrews in the wake of the conquest
of Jerusalem and the razing of the city by Babylon.
1How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow
she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess
among the provinces has become a vassal.
2She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her
lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously
with her, they have become her enemies.
3Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives
now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all
overtaken her in the midst of her distress.
4The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her
gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is
bitter.
5Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the LORD
has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have
gone away, captives before the foe.
6From daughter Zion has departed all her majesty. Her princes have become
like stags that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer.
19The thought of
my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! 20My soul continually thinks of 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 that seeks him. 26It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.
***
Hope in the Lord.
There are days like this, there are months, and sometimes
there are years, but there is never an eternity like this, an eternity of
lament, because there is a God in which to hope.
I look at this passage, and if we are honest with
ourselves, and willing to go those deep wounded places, we can relate to this
passage. Lamentations uses the image of daughter Zion weeping and alone in a
city that has been conquered and forsaken. I imagine there are times in our
lives where we felt so alone that only metaphor can describe the emptiness.
This personal emptiness is described by Pastor Nate Pyle, in his article,
Confronting the Lie, God Wont Give You More Than You Can Handle. He writes,
“The
past three weeks have been the most difficult I have ever gone through.
These three weeks have been filled with illness, the terrible-three’s
(the terrible-two’s are an out-and-out lie), a friend suffering the consequence
of sin, a ministry I am a part of reeling in confusion and pain, having to
cancel a trip to celebrate my parents 60th birthdays, and our family
experiencing the emotional roller-coaster of finding out we were pregnant only
to be told the pregnancy was ectopic and could be life-threatening to my wife
if it was not ended.[1]...
This experience forced me to look at one such statement that gets spouted often when people go through a lot: God won’t give you more than you can handle. If I may be so bold, let’s just call that what it is:
Bullshit.
Tell that to a survivor of Auschwitz.
Tell it to the man who lost his wife and child in a car accident.
Tell it to the girl whose innocence was robbed from her.
Tell it to the person crushed under the weight of depression and anxiety.
Tell it to the kids who just learned their parent has a terminal illness.
Limp, anemic sentiments will not stand in the face of a world that is not as it should be.”
Pastor Pyle, is in a Daughter Zion situation, and as he
notes, it is not only his life that is in this situation. It is the world.
Daughter Zion not only represents the individual, but also the community’s
experience of grief. I think of this grief, in worn torn countries, those
plauged by natural disaster, or oppression. Where is Daughter Zion today? Does
she weep next to weapons in Somalia, or child trafficking from North Korea, or violence
from the drug cartels in Mexico City and Juarez, does she hid in girl’s schools
in Pakistan, does she feel empty looking over the flooded out and burned up
towns in Colorado, is she here with us after the death of a child a couple
weeks ago? There are times in our homelands where we feel overtaken and
forsaken that we can only describe ourselves in Daughter Zion sorts of ways.
Yet, even for daughter Zion, there is hope. At the end of her painful litany,
she speaks,
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 that seeks him. 26It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.”
As a pastor, I hear this notion a
lot. People say to me that they don’t understand how people make it through
the hard times without faith. This wonder is often less of a judgement against
nonbelievers, than it is a profound gratitude for God’s presence in the life of
the suffering. It is daughter Zion type of moment, a moment when all one can
do, all one has left is hope.
When I was little, and didn’t believe in God, I had this hope, this hope in
humanity, that one day, we would all gather together and seek to do good. It
was much the image of children, red, and yellow, black, and white, all holding
hands in a circle around the earth. I imagined everyone seeking to do good, and
if we just tried a little harder we could change the world for the better. I
was, if you can imagine, quite an idealistic and brazen youth. My mom remembers
answering my debates with the quip, “Well Kate, Life is not fair.” She also
remembered my answer. “Well Mom, it should be fair, and we should try to do
everything we can make it fair.” Although, the response to that I got in the
old days was probably more along the lines of, “because I said so, Kate,” she later
told me that my challenge of change always stunned her, and I think when we
bring hope to hopelessness it is stunning.
These days, some of my youth-like-idealism is gone. I no
longer think, we could all band together - red, and yellow, black, and white.
We can’t even band together in this country Red State and Blue State. With this
reality, there is hopelessness that comes in seeing the world in shades of
grey. I no longer wish on every dandelion for World Peace, and I doubt it is
possible to end hunger. I no longer have that hope in humanity, and I think my
child self would be upset with me, I am part of the problem. But what my
child-self did not know, that I know now, is a hope in God. A hope in the
mysterious ways God responds to Daughter Zion. The small kindnesses that happen
right when you need them, a card, a call, a quote. The ways that although
nothing gold can stay, there is also grass and roots that overcome concrete,
popping through parking lots and sidewalks. That even in the abandoned lots of
NYC dandelions grow, and give pops of yellow color. Pastor Pyle write about
this too.
“Later,
Paul will write it is when he is weak that the strength of Christ is seen.
In other words, when we can’t do it any longer. When we are fed up.
When it has become too much. When we have nothing left. When
we are empty. When it is beyond our capability to deal with it.
Then, in that moment, the strength of the God of resurrection will be
seen. Until we get to that point, we rely on ourselves thinking we can
handle it and take care of the problem.
Don’t
hear me saying I am rejoicing because of the last couple of weeks. I am
not. Not once have I danced around our house shouting, “Yeah suffering!”
Instead, in the midst of pain and hurt, I am actively expecting God to do
something. I don’t know what. I don’t know when. But I am
expecting the God of resurrection to heal us. I am expecting God to
restore us. I am expecting him to redeem this situation. I am
expecting him to do this and so I will be actively looking and waiting for him
to do something. I believe expectant waiting can only happen when we
exchange our feeble platitudes for an authentic faith that engages God with the
full brunt of our emotion and pain. Only then can salvation been seen.
But that exchange takes courage.
It takes courage to have hope, it is nonsensical, and
unrealistic that as life is pulling us in downward, that it will ever turn
around and go the other way, but what is amazing, is that it does. I have this
image from my childhood of the children’s offering basket at my home church. It
was yarn, and had red, and yellow back and white kids all holding hands
encircling the center of the offering basket. Rather than the image of kids
around the globe, this offering basket is my image of hope. That somehow God
can take what we have, our daughter Zion moments, and create something new and
good. That even in our daughter zion moments, we can have hope, because God is
present. Because, there are Daughter Zion days, days like this, there are
months, and sometimes there are years, but there is never an eternity like
this, never an eternity of lament, because there is a God in which to hope.
[1]
http://natepyle.com/confronting-the-lie-god-wont-give-you-more-than-you-can-handle/#sthash.lVd1pXK2.dpuf
