Hope is a Good Thing

So today I finished the very long book of Jeremiah and decided to read all of Lamentations in one sitting (there's that overacheiver rearing her ugly head).  To be honest, I wasn't really expecting to find a new favorite passage.  When am I going to learn to remember to approach this amazing Book with an attitude of expectancy every time I open it?

The introduction should have clued me in that I was in for a treat today.

"Lamentations is a concentrated and intense biblical witness to suffering. Suffering is a huge, unavoidable element in the human condition. To be human is to suffer. No one gets an exemption.

Lamentations provides the community of faith with a form and vocabulary for dealing with loss and pain....

and throughout the world the suffering continues, both in large-scale horrors and in personal agonies.....

Neither explaining suffering nor offering a program for the elimination of suffering, Lamentations keeps company with the extensive biblical witness that gives dignity to suffering by insisting that God enters our suffering and is companion to our suffering."*

When this passage was written, God's people were in exile (dragged out of their beloved Jerusalem to evil Babylon) and had reduced themselves to eating their own children and killing the religious leaders.  That is bad, yet it's not too far-fetched from some of what we are seeing in the news these days, is it?  How many of us haven't been disgusted as we watch what's going on in the world around us, our world?  We are either feeling it on behalf of others or we are experiencing our own personal suffering. Or both. God is not unaware.  And He has addressed it in His Word - like He always does.

So check out this gem from chapter 3:21-33

"But there's one thing I remember, 

and remembering, I keep a grip on hope:

God's loyal love couldn't have run out,

His merciful love couldn't have dried up.

They're created new every morning.

How great your faithfulness!

I'm sticking with God (I say it over and over).

He's all I've got left.

God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,

to the woman who diligently seeks.

It's a good thing to quietly hope,

quietly hope for help from God.

It's a good thing when you're young

to stick it out through the hard times.

When life is heavy and hard to take,

go off by yourself.  Enter the silence.

Bow in prayer.  Don't ask questions:

Wait for hope to appear.

 Don't run from trouble.  Take it full-face.

The "worst" is never the worst.

Why?  Because the Master won't ever

walk out and fail to return.

If He works severely, He also works tenderly.

His stockpiles of loyal love are immense.

He takes no pleasure in making life hard,

in throwing roadblocks in the way."  

I did it again. Tried to highlight just the parts I liked the best, but they all are so spot on and speak the truth about God that my heart needs to know today.

I hope you find comfort in it as well.  Take all these promises seriously.  Whatever you're going through today, whatever you're waiting on God for, keep a grip on hope, quietly hope for help from God...it's a good thing.  God will prove to be good to you.  Stick it out.  Go off by yourself.  Enter silence.  Pray.  Don't ask questions.  Wait for hope.  Don't run from trouble.  God will come for you with immense loyal love.

Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

PS...isn't this another great reason to read through the Bible?  You never know what God has hidden there for you. Sorry, I couldn't resist :)

*E Peterson, The Message version