Morning Devotionals

by Don Emmitte

 

April 26th, 2008

 

"The Restoration of Hope (Part 1)"

I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.  So I say, "My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord." I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:18-23 NIV).

The more I counsel these days, the more I am convinced that many people suffer from an absence of hope. When you begin to think of the circumstances of our world with wars, imminent starvation, economic ruin, and rampant disease it is no wonder that people find themselves wavering in their hope! However, such was the situation of Jeremiah, the writer of our reading today.

I can picture him as an old man at this writing, sitting alone in the dirt. Telltale wisps of dust on the horizon marked the last of the departing victor's chariots. Jerusalem lay in waste, sacked and razed. Embers still smoldered; ashes of the temple floated in the hot desert air. Bodies lay rotting in the street, an unclean abomination before God, a graphic reminder of the devastation. Vultures circled over the carnage. Somewhere in the ruins a mother who'd managed to hide from the marauders wailed at the loss of her child. But most were gone now, slain or deported to Babylon. Even though he had prophesied Jerusalem's fall, the butchery of the Babylonians must have stunned Jeremiah. Sobs racked his body. There seemed to be no end to his tears. They ran down his leathery cheeks and mixed with the dirt caked in his unkempt gray beard. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Daughter of Zion, fallen. Gone.

It would have been simply normal for him to ask where God had gone. The prophet knew in his heart that the city's punishment was just. Yet that knowledge did nothing to stop the ache in his soul as he watched his city burn. Everything he'd ever cared about and dreamed of had been utterly consumed. How could he go on? No wonder he cries out, I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.  So I say, "My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord."