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Meditations from Lamentations 3
| Bro Gaius Egwu (Ohafia, Nigeria)
“‘T
he Lord is my portion’, saith my
soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him’.
The Lord is good to them that wait for him,
to the soul that seeketh him” (Lam 3:24-5).
In what circumstances did the prophet pen
these words? Were things going well for him?
Did the people to whom he prophesied heed
his message? Was Jerusalem prospering under
the evident blessing of God?
NO! The prophet wrote these words while
in the depths of despair. The prophet
complained of his dark situation. Open your
Bible and read Lamentations 3. Perhaps this
message will grip you as it often has me. I
have shared this chapter with inmates at our
local jail, and it seems to register
with them. I suspect people in
various situations have expe-
rienced such feelings.
At first, the prophet’s
words are shock mock-
ingly strong. How could
he dare to write this? Yet
in our affliction we, too,
can turn against God in our
pain-distorted vision. God
Almighty seems to loom over
us with a rod of wrath. Even the
bitterness of our heart seems as if it
were put there by God (v15). Why is He
doing this? Our hope is perished!
Do you know that the prophet found hope in
his distress? In verse 21 we see a 180 degree
turn in his thinking: “This I recall, therefore
I have hope.” Did the prophet just want to
fool himself with happy thoughts so that he
could feel better? No. What we see is a mani-
festation of faith. Hebrews tells us that
without faith it is impossible to please God.
That is especially true when you feel as this
prophet did. And when he found faith in God,
he found hope.
We also see the prophet choosing to be
thankful. Instead of counting his wounds, he
rejoiced that he had not been consumed.
Really, God had been merciful to him. From
this vantage point, the prophet suddenly saw
himself as privileged, not as treated unfairly.
Verse 24 shows us that he chose to hope:
“‘The Lord is my portion,’ saith my soul,
‘therefore will I hope in him’”. Maybe the
prophet found this an easy choice after
experimenting with the alternative. When he
had turned against God, what hope was
there? Bitterness may have given him a sense
of security for a while but it was not enough.
When he let go of his bitterness, he found
hope in God.
The next three verses each use the word
‘good’. Again this was not a mental trick.
The prophet was not ignoring the
yoke of affliction. Instead he
recognized that God is good,
no matter what. Now it
didn’t matter what he was
going through. He would
wait until he saw the
good that God had for
him. No longer were
life’s circumstances
clouding the prophet’s
outlook. Instead, his
renewed vision of God was
shedding light on the scene.
God does not delight in inflicting
pain. He wants to use the things we face as
a means to a merciful end. “Who is he that
saith, and it comes to pass, when the Lord
commandeth it not? Is it not out of the
mouth of the Most High proceedeth both
good and evil?” (v37-38, compare with
Romans 8:28). The prophet decided he had
best admit it: he could not control the events
of life. Instead, his job was to control his
response to the events as God allowed them.
He said, “Let us search and try our ways -
and return again unto the Lord” (v40-41).
In the last part of the chapter, the prophet
poured out his heart to God. Through a
proper view of God, the prophet had found
One to whom he could bare his heart. He
found hope instead of despair.