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.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”
Lamentations 3:21-24 (NIV)

Jeremiah shows all the signs of being an Enneagram Type Four. The constant brooding. The wallowing in melancholy. The ability to wax eloquent and hyperbolic on his suffering and affliction. Of course, Jeremiah has far more reason than I to brood. When, in today’s poetic chapter, he states “I called on your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit” it wasn’t just hyperbole. In Jeremiah 38, his enemies literally threw the prophet into an empty well and left him to die in the muddy slime at the bottom.

And I think I’ve seen some bad days.

One of the things lost on most readers of Lamentations is the intricate way in which it is written. Each chapter is its own separate Hebrew poem. Each poem (chapter) is a Hebrew acrostic, meaning that every verse begins with a different letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Today’s chapter is the middle poem, and those who joined me for last year’s journey through the book of Psalms might remember that in Hebrew poetry, the very middle verse or stanza or poem tends to contain the central theme. The way that Jeremiah structured this cycle of poems, the first verse of today’s chapter is the central verse of the book:

I am the man who has seen affliction
    by the rod of the Lord’s wrath.

[cue: I Am a Man of Constant Sorrows by the Soggy Bottom Boys]

Yesterday, I wrote about the very human need to grieve, and the permission that God gives throughout the Great Story to do so. I believe it is healthy on all levels to process and express sorrow and grief, and God gives consistent permission to do so. Jesus even sweat blood as He expressed His despair at the suffering He was about to face on the final day of his earthly journey. Singing the blues is good for the soul.

Along the journey, however, I’ve also learned that there’s a point at which the healthy expression of my sorrow becomes an unhealthy victim status. Jeremiah didn’t die in the pit. Jesus didn’t stay in the grave. Choosing to mire myself in despair and refuse hope is to deny the very core of my faith.

Jeremiah quite obviously was a student of David’s lyrics in the Psalms. He follows David’s example both in shamelessly singing the blues, but also in finding the inflection point at which a ray of light shines in the darkness. There’s always that moment when the free-fall ends and the road begins to ascend. It’s the moment of eucatastrophe when the winds shift, the lighthouse appears on the horizon, and the seeds of hope bear fruit in the midst of despair. Jeremiah, writing from the depths of death, starvation, and devastation more extreme than David ever faces, makes the turn to hope more eloquently than David ever did:

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.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”

That’s the moment I seek in every dark valley of my journey. The moment that comes after I’ve cried a river of tears, screamed like King Lear and his fool into the winds of misfortune, written endless pages of guttural lament, and feasted on every angry growl of my blues collection. The moment when I lay spent from the rage and my soul can finally hear the whisper:

“Yet this I call to mind…”

Wait for it.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.