New Every Morning

Blackened stones. Broken gates. Streets that used to be full of children playing, now silent. A man sits among the ruins of his city as the sun comes up. And through his tears he says something no one expects.

It is soon after five hundred and eighty-six before Christ. The Babylonian army has destroyed Jerusalem. The temple has been burned. The walls are torn down. Many people have died, many more have been taken away as captives, and those left behind are hungry and heartbroken. The book of Lamentations is five poems of grief written about these days. Lamentations means songs of mourning. The poet is not named, but an old tradition says it was the prophet Jeremiah, who had warned for years that this would happen and then lived to see it. In the third poem, the writer speaks as one man who has suffered terribly. And in the middle of it, everything turns.

First, he is honest about how bad it feels. “Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.” Wormwood and gall are bitter plants, and he says his life tastes like them. Remember my trouble, my wandering, the bitterness. I can't stop thinking about it, he says, and my soul sinks down inside me. He doesn't pretend. He doesn't put on a brave face. He tells God exactly how he feels. And then comes one small word: but. Or, as the King James Bible puts it: “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.” There is something he decides to remember.

“It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” Picture him, sitting in the ruins at dawn, as the light spreads across the broken walls. The city is gone. The temple is gone. But God's steadfast love has not run out. Every single morning there is a fresh supply of God's mercy, like the manna that fell in the wilderness each day. “The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.” A portion was a family's share of land, their inheritance. He has lost his land. But he still has God, and God is enough.

Then the poet shares what he has learned, the way an older person might teach a younger one. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him. It is good to hope, and to wait quietly for the Lord to save. It is good for someone to learn to carry hard things while they are young. Sit quietly, he says. Be humble. There may yet be hope. And then he finishes with three lines that hold on to God's character. “For the Lord will not cast off for ever.” Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, because his steadfast love is so great. For he does not willingly bring trouble or grief to anyone. God takes no pleasure in our pain. Sorrow is real, but it does not have the last word.

Lamentations is carefully built. Four of its five poems are acrostics: their verses begin with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order. Chapter three is the most intricate of all. It has sixty-six verses, and each letter of the twenty-two letter alphabet begins three verses in a row. Grief can feel like chaos, but the poet poured it into the most ordered shape he knew, from A to Z. And the words of hope stand right in the middle of the book.

You'll find these words in Lamentations chapter three, verses nineteen to thirty-three. A grieving poet in a ruined city who remembered that God's mercies are new every morning. So here is a question to carry with you. On a hard day, what is one thing about God you can choose to remember?