Marshall Jenkins
“They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
Lamentations is a hurricane of pain. After the Babylonians decimate Jerusalem and take all but the poorest into exile, Daughter Zion cries out for a witness. She has nothing to comfort her. Her children dead, her once splendid home in rubble and ashes, her treasures now the raider's booty, exposed and taunted by every passerby, she has not even the comfort of naming anyone else to blame for her fate. God, who promised protection and prosperity forever, sent instead ruthless, bloodthirsty soldiers who raped, murdered, and destroyed without mercy. She cries out for a witness, but God remains silent, no sign of hearing or seeing.
Through the voices of Daughter Zion, an anonymous narrator, a strong man, the clamoring people with souls as starved and shriveled as their bodies, Lamentations begins and ends with desperate agony. Yet, the eye of the storm offers a moment's light in the middle, a moment of breathing and seeing and incredibly, inexplicably, hoping. The strong man tells how God through the Babylonians hunted him and "shot into my vitals the arrows of his quiver...filled me with bitterness...my soul...bereft of peace" [3:13, 15, 17]. He ruminates over his misery. Then from nowhere: "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" [3:21-23]. He continues this way for a moment, never denying his suffering but insisting that in this horror God is somehow doing something good, that waiting even with no consolation in sight will disclose God coming again in saving power.
The storm resumes, and Lamentations surround us again with pain and darkness. Can we wait there with Daughter Zion, the strong man, the suffering masses? Can we wait as one of them? Can we drink this cup?
God, when you seem absent or angry, give me faith to wait, expecting your salvation. Amen.
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