“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.”
- Lamentation 3:22-23
The first twenty-one verses of Lamentations 3 are full of honest and very raw expressions of suffering by the prophet Jeremiah. His lament is for the fallen city of Jerusalem, but like all of God’s Word, its applications are many and varied, and all valuable.
When we are faced with the death of a beloved friend or family member, our experience of that wrenching horror is deeply felt. Death is part of the curse of sin and it is terrible, and the feelings it elicits are raw. Jeremiah’s poetic words are not too strong to express that rawness: ‘He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship’. ‘He has weighed me down with chains’. ‘He pierced my heart with arrows’. And, ‘my soul is downcast within me’. These are just a few ways Jeremiah expresses his pain. In almost every case, Jeremiah lays the first cause at the door of God. God is sovereign over these tragedies.
But, if he’s sovereign over the tragedy, then over the blessing too! In spite of these awful trials and terrible experiences, according to Jeremiah, we are not ‘consumed’. In the Lord’s great love our sorrow is not the end of the story. Jeremiah’s experience is, that because God’s compassions never fail, the clouds of sorrow give way to the light of life; new every morning.
One micro-second after Liane died she was in the presence of Jesus her saviour for ever – in indescribable joy. Liane’s death reminds us that death is coming to us too, and then, joy at his right hand!
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