Lamentations 3: Hope in the Lords faithfulness
15He has filled me with bitterness and given me a bitter cup of sorrow to drink.
I have been feeling bitter. And for what? Why do I feel such sorrow in the season of new things? Why do I have such a bitter attitude towards things that I find myself with discontentment. When again I can't fully comprehend or figure out what would make me content.
16 He has made me chew on gravel. He has rolled me in the dust. 17Peace has been stripped away and I have forgotten what prosperity is. 18I cry out, "my splendor is gone! Everything I have hoped for from the Lord is lost!"".
I find myself thinking about the word prosperity. I honestly don't know what it means. Did I ever? I don't feel the peace I did way back when. So then where am I to go from here? God what are you trying to teach me?
19"The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words."
I have been so homesick. I have been so overwhelmed. I have been so overwhelmed with wanting to be back with friends. Back with those who I smiled so much with. Discovered so much with. To breathe the same air and hear their voices as though we were on bikes again, in the middle of no where. I am so homesick that I have stayed at less than a vacation.
But yet the ties and conversations held with people from each of these places have become more valuable than any vacation stay that can easily become so shallow in conversation and seclusion. Privacy stripped and feelings bare like our hearts baring scars and fresh wounds that continue to heal as we offer parts of ourselves as living, breathing, pedaling sacrifices. Making that trek of multiple pedal strokes our daily offering. Where were we in these conversations and can we feel the way we felt those nights when we let walls crumble? Can we be that honest with ourselves again as we feel the bitterness of these moments pass through our hearts and souls like swallowing ice cubes and feeling it melt. Casting that cold from the inside out. Could it be true that our hearts give the same reaction? How will we thaw these frozen parts of ourselves again? Places of the heart that have been experiencing the latest ice age?
I am still homesick for these places, these faces that I've gotten used to calling home.
20 I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. 21Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: 22The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. 23Great is His faithfulness. His mercies begin afresh every morning. 24 I say to myself, The Lord is my inheritance; therefore I will hope in Him"
Amen.
I know what it is like to miss a people as much as you miss a place. I know what it is like to miss a time and wonder how to capture it again. One thing I have learned is that you have to rely on the LORD in this time. The LORD who brought those people and that time to you is the LORD of your "now." He still cares, He still forms, He still accepts.
ReplyDeleteIn the times you don't feel the mercy of God, hope in the mere fact that it still exists.
Praying for you as you transition yet again. Back to the giants, back to the kids, Back to the familiar and the new all at once.