This is part of an ongoing series during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. To engage further in the #QuarantineSoulCare series, click here.
For almost a month, I sat with Jeremiah, who sat with God. I let him do the talking. I read the same passage out of the third chapter of Lamentations every morning, until I almost knew it by heart.
You seem to me a bear lying in wait, ready to get me. You have walled me in, and I am trapped. You’ve made my chains heavy. My endurance is near gone—and so is my hope.
–Lamentations 3:10-11, author’s paraphrase
His words mirror what we think in our worst moments of pain and distortion—when it feels like we’ve been left by the side of the road somewhere and nothing good will ever happen again. … He was wrestling with his distortions of God—with God. The living God was not striking him dead, or sending him away in shame, but holding him close until he could see reality again. …
When Jeremiah has spent himself, he stops and breathes deep the air of mercy. Oh, yes, I can almost imagine him saying to himself, I remember.
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
–Lamentations 3:22-23
Some of the most loved words of Scripture are Jeremiah’s. They are the words of a man who was in an awful place and washed up on the shore of trust, who was anchored once again by remembering that the Lord is especially good to those who wait for him.
May today you breathe deep the air of mercy and experience a new mercy for the day. Click To TweetGOD is good to one and all;
everything he does is suffused with grace.
–Psalm 145:9, The Message
Today’s reading was taken from And Yet, Undaunted by Paula Rinehart and Connally Gilliam.
