Each photo below corresponds to the chapter-a-day post for the book of Lamentations published by Tom Vander Well in December of 2021. Click on the photo linked to each chapter to read the post.
Lamentations (Dec 2021)
Tag Archives: Lamentations
Of Rubble and Restoration
Of Rubble and Restoration (CaD Ps 126) – Wayfarer
Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Psalm 126:5 (NIV)
I had a great conversation recently with a gentleman who shared with me some of his life story. It read like a roller coaster of ups and downs in business from the luxuries of being at the helm of successful corporate ventures to the bitter pill of his own companies that failed terribly and lost him everything. As he reaches the twilight of his vocational journey, I observed a deep joy within him for all that he’d experienced and also deep wisdom sourced in the lessons of both successes and failures.
As I mulled over what he told me, it reminded me of my own dad who I observed navigating his own vocational highs and lows as I was growing up. There is so much I observed in my parents that I never fully appreciated until I was a husband and father trying to provide for my family and make my own way through vocational peaks and valleys. It’s in adulthood that I finally appreciated all of the joys of vocational success, all the anxieties of job changes, and all the pain of business failures.
Today’s chapter, Psalm 126, isn’t fully understood outside of the context of history. In 586 B.C. the Hebrew people had their own “lost everything” moment. Their nation was plundered, their capital city destroyed, and their temple was desecrated and reduced to rubble. Most of the people were taken into captivity and exile. For a generation, they were forced to make a new life for themselves in a foreign land left to wonder if they would ever return to their own land and rebuild their home. Those not taken into captivity were left to try and survive amidst the rubble and the carnage. Some were reduced to cannibalism just to survive.
One of those left behind was the prophet, Jeremiah. The book we call Lamentations is his poetic expression of grief at the devastation he witnessed when Jerusalem was destroyed:
“This is why I weep
and my eyes overflow with tears.
No one is near to comfort me,
no one to restore my spirit.
My children are destitute
because the enemy has prevailed.”
At the same time, it was at this rock-bottom, lost-everything moment when Jeremiah’s faith was activated and he discovered this thing called hope:
“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.”
In 538 B.C. the first wave of exiles were allowed to return and begin rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple and for the next 100 years the restoration continued as more and more exiles returned.
Today’s chapter was a song likely written from the pinnacle of Jerusalem’s restoration and the realization of Jeremiah’s hope. As I go back and reread the lyrics, I imagine being the descendant of Jeremiah singing those lyrics on my pilgrimage to the Passover festival knowing that I was experiencing the realization of what the prophet could only dream.
As I meditated on this, I thought of my grandparents being newlyweds and starting a family during the Great Depression. I know their stories. They shared with me how little they had, how hard they struggled, and I got to observe them en-joy-ing the goodness they experienced in their later years, long after those tragic times. It strikes me that my generation is probably the last generation to have known that generation and to have personally heard their stories.
In the quiet this morning, I find myself reflecting on the highs and lows of this life journey. There’s so much joy, faith, and hope to be found in life’s dark valleys if I choose to seek it. Wisdom is there if I open my heart to hear her speak to me. There is also so much to celebrate when the road of life winds its way up the next mountain and that dark valley is a distant memory and life lesson. That’s the waypoint from which the lyrics of Psalm 126 spring.
Chapter-a-Day Deuteronomy 28
And you’ll end up cannibalizing your own sons and daughters that God, your God, has given you. When the suffering from the siege gets extreme, you’re going to eat your own babies. The most gentle and caring man among you will turn hard, his eye evil, against his own brother, his cherished wife, and even the rest of his children who are still alive, refusing to share with them a scrap of meat from the cannibal child-stew he is eating. He’s lost everything, even his humanity, in the suffering of the siege that your enemy mounts against your fortified towns. Deuteronomy 28:53-55 (MSG)
Things like cannibalism tend to stand out in today’s culture. Perhaps that’s why this passage stood out in today’s chapter. We can’t fathom an act so inhuman and grotesque. Yet, for the people following Moses, the idea was not foreign. Child sacrifice was common among the religions of the region and the seige warfare described in today’s chapter had become common in Moses time as more and more cities created walls to protect themselves from invaders.
What is very scary to me about today’s chapter is the way it perfectly describes the events witnessed and recorded by Jeremiah both in the book of Jeremiah and in the book of Lamentations, where the prophet records in verse what he witnesses in the seige of Jerusalem by the Babylonians:
“Look at us, God. Think it over. Have you ever treated anyone like this?
Should women eat their own babies, the very children they raised?”
The very things that Moses warned were the very things that happened, cannibalism and all. Today I am reminded that these chapters I read are not just from any book; They are part of God’s Message and God’s story from the beginning to the end of all that we know. What Moses predicted came to pass in the days of Jeremiah, what Jeremiah predicted came to pass in the person of Jesus, what Jesus predicted….
Lord, have mercy on us.
