Jeremiah was there to see it, when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. People often feel a perverse I-told-you-so satisfaction when their predictions of doom come true, but that was not Jeremiah’s reaction. Although he had been insisting for many years that devastation was on its way, he felt no joy when it arrived.

Instead, he poured out his sorrow and heartbreak: “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people” (Lamentations 1:1). “Jerusalem sinned grievously, so she has become a mockery; all who honored her despise her” (1:8). “Happier were those pierced by the sword than those pierced by hunger, whose life drains away, deprived of the produce of the field” (4:9). “The joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has been turned to mourning” (5:15).

Jeremiah was not shy about ascribing all the disaster to God’s hand. He would be the first to admit that it had been our own sins that had brought the punishment down on our heads; and he also acknowledged that the Babylonians were the ones who destroyed the city. Yet beyond all these factors, and ruling over them, Jeremiah recognized that God is the one who is in charge of the world, and God is the one who had specifically established these events. God “has driven and bought me into darkness without any light” (3:2), and “has besieged me and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation” (3:5). “He has filled me with bitterness, he has sated me with wormwood” (3:15).

You might think that all this bitterness would lead to desolation or apathy or apostasy. But in the midst of all the anguish – the anguish is real, and Jeremiah expressed it to the depths of his soul – in the midst of all the anguish, we find these astonishing words: “The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him” (3:19-24).

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Ah Lord God! In all of our sufferings, great and small, hear our cries. We raise our own lamentations before you. Yet somehow we will sing, for we know that your steadfast love never ceases. Your mercies never come to an end. Great is your faithfulness! You are our portion: we set our hope in you.