Lamentations 1:1-2:19; Philemon 1:1-25; Psalm 101:1-8;
Proverbs 26:20
Today we
begin Lamentations, considered by most scholars and Jewish tradition to be
written by Jeremiah. Lamentations is a series of five laments on the fate of
Jerusalem, according to The Bible
Knowledge Commentary. The first four chapters, or laments, are arranged in
acrostic order in Hebrew, so we can’t see it, of course. But the acrostic
influenced how the author set up the laments and then helped him remember it.
We can only
imagine the sorrow of Jeremiah as he watched the destruction of Jerusalem. His
friends, if he had any left, his family and his home, the holy city of Jerusalem,
have been demolished or taken into captivity. He writes with deep aching sorrow, yet he writes with hope. We don’t see the hope in today’s reading, but watch
for it tomorrow in chapter 3.
Jeremiah
cares profoundly that Jerusalem has fallen. He has seen the Babylonians
desecrate the most holy place. To a devout Jew, that was the worst possible
sight. “My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within, my heart is poured
out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants
faint in the streets of the city” (Lam. 2:11).
Yet he
admonishes the people to turn toward God—to spend the night in prayer to Him
for the lives of their children who are faint with hunger (Lam. 2:19). “Arise, cry
out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like
water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of
your children who faint from hunger at the head of every street.” This verse is
the theme verse for the mothers’ prayer group, Moms in Prayer International. I
hope they know the desperate situation during which that verse was written!
Maybe, when
I stop and think about it, though we are not in any kind of physical
destruction in our country, we are in a kind of moral destruction. Ethics have
eroded: standards of decent behavior which held for centuries, like marriage
before sex and marriage before children, are now almost obsolete.
So it looks
like Moms in Prayer International chose a good verse after all. I was part of
this group in our neighborhood while our daughters were in junior high and high
school in Texas. I loved the time we moms spent praying for our children. I
left that prayer time each week knowing that we had done some good work!
May the good
work of prayer continue as we pour out our hearts like water in the presence of
the Lord.
- Nell
Sunukjian
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