Daily Bible Readings
Today’s Devotion by Jake Ballard (IN)
Once, a young boy watched helplessly as his world fell apart around him. For a year, he watched as his vibrant, loving, passionate mother succumbed to the power of cancer and chemotherapy. Three days after Christmas, she breathed her last. His heartbroken father grieved; his beloved aunts and uncles and grandparents supported as best they could.
But in the next month, January, his grandmother (his mom’s mom) who had been suffering a disease that destroyed her muscles, finally had all her muscles completely fail, and she too died.
Then the boy’s father left to play basketball in February…
He walked out the door… and never was able to come home…
And the boy
had no
words
How could he?
His world had shattered so agonizingly slowly, and just when the reality had hit home, a new wave of despair…
How could his dad be gone?
Lamentations has a structure in chapters 1-4. Each chapter is a self-contained acrostic, and chapter 3 is an interesting play on that.
Chapter 5 is what happens when devastation and despair overwhelm to the point where words fail.
The pattern breaks.
There is no acrostic.
The only order in the midst of the grief of the Lamenter breaks down.
Words begin to fail.
Often in songs of Lament, there is the turn-around, the recognition of God’s loving, providing care that the Lamenter feels and sees. We’ve seen the hope of that in chapter 3. The final couplet (5:21-22), demands, asks, begs for God’s intervention, but also voices the horror “unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry beyond measure.”
The Lamenter has not left the lamentation by the end of the book.
I want you to know that God doesn’t demand a bright and happy smile as you come into the end of this year.
The holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year) can be especially difficult if you have lost people in the previous year, and you might still be grieving. There are times when all words are broken and the order of our lives is stripped away and we simply are, merely exist…
God is there.
Listening to you yell and rage and cry and weep.
And he loves you through it all.
He will make all things new… but we might not see it now.
The boy who lost so much did not see a clear “end” to his lament, nor did he piece his life together on his own.
He was lovingly, carefully, powerfully held by God, embraced by the church, trained by faithful men and women, and grew up to be a pastor, hoping to share with those who read his words this day that hope exists on the other side. Even when you cannot see it, God is with you in the lament.
Have your words failed? God hears the Spirit in you groan with something deeper than words
Have you not seen restoration yet? One day it will come.
My brothers and sisters, may you express your heart to the Lord in your lament, in whatever way your heart is broken.
May you feel his touch upon your life even when everything has lost all sense.
And if, when, your words fail, may you trust that God is there, listening to the beating of your broken heart, and loving you in your lament.
May he restore you, in this life or in the age to come, because his wrath was taken by Christ on the cross.
Amen.
Reflection Questions
- In the midst of your dark days what has given you comfort and hope for the future?
- How can you work as God’s agent in spreading comfort and hope, perhaps even at a time when there are no words.
Prayer
Dear Heavenly Father – Thank You for being the God of all comfort, even when we are in such distress that we can not fathom being comforted. I need you, God. Teach my heart how to cling to You, in all ways and on all days. Thank You for making things new. In Your Son’s name who gives us hope, amen.
