HelpFinder Bible - Flipbook - Page 1090
Lamentations
A C R O S S T H E R O O M , a woman is crying, tears streaming down
her face. The setting may be a funeral, or it may be a wedding. The
floodgates of human emotion have burst open, and tears of sorrow
or tears of joy flow.
What you will be
Lamentations could be called the Book of Tears,
reading about
for it is a lament for a wounded, broken, punished city and its people. For forty long years,
1:1- 22
Jeremiah mourns for
Jeremiah had warned his people of impending
Jerusalem
doom. But they hadn’t listened. They rejected
2:1- 22
Jeremiah and his message. Because of that,
God’s anger at sin
the hour of doom had come. Jerusalem, once a
golden city, became a pile of rubble. The mag3:1- 66
Hope in the midst of
nificent Temple lay in utter ruins. Even worse,
adversity
Jerusalem’s people were on their way to Babylon
4:1- 22
as captives, many of them never to return.
God’s anger is satisfied
Jeremiah wept. His sorrow was sincere and ran
5:1- 22
deep. He cried for a ruined city. He cried for its
Jeremiah pleads for
people, and in that sense, his tears were both
restoration
sympathetic and empathetic. Jeremiah was not
grieving for his own future. Tragic circumstances could not shake his faith in
God. His was a broken heart, but it was a heart broken because of the sin of his
people and the needless destruction that came as a consequence of that sin.
The road to sin may be filled with temporary pleasures, but the final destination is always misery.
For what do you weep today? What stirs you enough to bring tears to your
eyes? The type of jokes that prompt laughter reveal something of the character
of a person. But the kind of circumstance that prompts grief and tears can be
even more revealing. Is there something in your life that should stir your grief,
some sin for which you should weep?
Jeremiah wept because he was one of the few people left who was still sensitive to sin. How about you? Do you feel uncomfortable when you do something
you know displeases God? Those who become desensitized to sin have little
chance of becoming right with God because they have lost their connection
to him. Jeremiah remained sensitive to sin because he remained sensitive to
God—his word, his will, and his work.
Commit yourself, like Jeremiah, to filling your day with godly thoughts and
actions. Ask God to make you uncomfortable—and even grief-stricken—over
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