"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope..."
{Lamentations 3:21} (NIV)
There are many things in this life that I don’t want to experience. The book of Lamentations lists many of them. As we read through this little book, we reach a point of despair, a giving up where Jeremiah actually says that everything he hoped for from the LORD was gone.
The prophet focuses his mind on his affliction and his wandering, the bitterness and the gall, and this action of his mind causes his soul to despair. But then he forces his mind to remember something else. He remembers that the LORD is Love! He remembers that there is hope because His compassions never fail and that they are new every morning. Therefore he tells himself to wait on the LORD. He reminds himself that the LORD is his and he is the LORD’s. He reminds himself that the LORD is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him.
Jeremiah then makes a logic leap that only a person who is actually experiencing these things can make. He states that because the LORD is good to those who hope and seek Him, then it is GOOD for a person to wait quietly and to bear the yoke of affliction. It is impossible for those who are not in affliction to follow this logic trail, but Jeremiah’s testimony teaches us that the LORD Himself will lead each of us to the place of hope in the midst of our despair. He will do it for us as He did for Jeremiah; through the renewing of our mind, and our faith and our hope as we think on the goodness and compassion of our LORD!
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