Lamentations 3:19-27

hey everybody my name is Coley Waataja
i’m on staff at Antioch Community Church
in Northeast Minneapolis and i want to
bring you an encouragement from the word
today
i want to look at the book of
lamentations if you know anything
about lamentations it is kind of a
depressing book
it is aptly named it’s a book of moments
and as the author of lamentations
is asking all of these questions and
wondering why all of these terrible and
difficult things are happening
he has a moment where he
re-centers himself in chapter 3
i’ll start in verse 19 he’s praying to
the lord and he says
remember my affliction and my wanderings
the wormwood and the gall
my soul continually remembers it and is
bowed down within me
but then then he turns his mind around
he says but
this i call to mind and therefore i have
hope
the steadfast love of the lord never
ceases
his mercies never come to an end they
are new every morning
great is your faithfulness the lord is
my portion
says my soul therefore i will hope in
him
the lord is good to those who wait for
him to the soul who seeks him
it is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the lord
it is good for a man that he bear the
yoke in his youth
i love this section because the author
does not
deny what’s happening he doesn’t pretend
like things aren’t difficult in the
moment but he re-centers
and he reframes it in the context of the
fact
that the the love of the lord
never changes even though these these
circumstances and these situations are
really difficult
the love of the lord never ceases and
sometimes even bearing a yoke as he says
in verse 27 can be good because it grows
us and it challenges us and it
strengthens us
and it gives us an opportunity to rely
on the lord even more deeply
i pray that you would do that today in
whatever difficult circumstances you are
finding yourself in i pray that you
would seek the lord
that you would wait on him that you
would trust in his steadfast love and
his
never-ending mercies and that you would
get to see his salvation
god bless