Lamentations 3:15-25
Hope in the LORD
15 He has filled me with bitter herbs
and sated me with gall.
16 He has broken my teeth with gravel;
he has trampled me in the dust.
17 I have been deprived of peace;
I have forgotten what prosperity is.
18 So I say, "My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the LORD."
19 I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
20 I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
21 Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."
25 The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him...
Many say the prophet Jeremiah wrote the Book of Lamentations...It is the saddest book in the Bible...The people of Israel and Judah would abandon our LORD and many were corrupted with idol worshiping...Jeremiah would warn the people of Judah about these two issues, but the people would not listen...God would remedy this situation...
The Jewish northern state of Israel was captured approximately one hundred years before its southern sister state of Judah was captured by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon...He completely destroys the city of Jerusalem and the Temple in Judah and leaves only a few people alive in the city...The rest of the people are exiled to Babylon...They are only a remnant of the old Judah...The exiled people will be their for seventy years, fifty years under Babylon rule and then Persia overtakes Babylon and the Jewish people are there for another twenty...
The author of Lamentations, is exiled and laments about his problems to God...The prophet Jeremiah has prophesied this and he knows that they are going to be in Babylon for years and years...Still knowing this, in the darkest of hours the author still finds hope as every new morning arrives, as he waits for God, and he continues to seek the LORD...Sometimes hope is what we need the most...Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail...His mercies are new every morning; great is the LORD's faithfulness...There is this hope we can find each and every morning...
Seventy years after the exile, King Cyrus of Persia, would allow the Jewish people to go back to Israel and let them rebuild the Temple under Ezra and Nehemiah...We need to think of God's power and God's timeline versus ours...Seventy years is a lot of time for man... It is not, for God...God is infinite, and is not aging or living in time...Jeremiah knew this and finds hope...