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When Comfort Seems Far Away (2/22/26)
For the first weeks of Lent, we shall be walking in the Book of Lamentations. As a whole, it must be one of the saddest books in the Bible. Jerusalem has fallen and the steady question of “Why? Why?” goes unanswered. It is a lament about hunger, rape, dying children, rejection, destroyed property. As the title of this week’s lesson says, comfort seemed far away.
Most of Lamentations is written as a poem. One dimension that is lost in translations is that in the original Hebrew, lines of the poem appear in alphabetical order…something like this:
Always I am
Beaten, but
Can I say to
Divinity, will I
Ever be able to
Find and enjoy
Growth in life?
As I was typing this, my phone rang. It was a former student who now serves as a pastor in a hurricane-damaged area. He said his wife and son were ignoring him. His neighbor was blaming him for yard trash caused by a fallen tree. No one in his congregation had checked on his well-being. He even went to the town office and found the place was closed. Equipment needed to clear the debris was too expensive to buy or rent. He closed the call by saying, “Thank you. I just wanted to tell someone.” Truth to tell, I was honored that he felt free to dump all this on me.
I mention this incident because I think God must have been pleased that the writers of Lamentations felt free to lay their genuine thoughts and feelings on God. I don’t have to pretend in front of God. I can unload my deepest hurt, my newest doubt, my daily weariness onto God’s open ears. What a gift! I don’t have to pretend in front of God!
What Someone Else Has Said: In The Christian Art of Dying (Eerdmans), Allen Verhey says “…Christian hope is not inconsistent with lament.” Then, he quote Clifton Black: “The spine of lament is hope: not the vacuous optimism that ‘things will get better,’ which in the short run is usually a lie, but the deep and irrepressible conviction in the teeth of present evidence, that God has not severed the umbilical cord that has always bound us to the Lord.”
Prayer: As you prepare this lesson, let your prayer begin: “Let me be truthful with You, Lord. Right now, some things are not going well. Where are You?...”
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By NC Conference of The UMCFor the first weeks of Lent, we shall be walking in the Book of Lamentations. As a whole, it must be one of the saddest books in the Bible. Jerusalem has fallen and the steady question of “Why? Why?” goes unanswered. It is a lament about hunger, rape, dying children, rejection, destroyed property. As the title of this week’s lesson says, comfort seemed far away.
Most of Lamentations is written as a poem. One dimension that is lost in translations is that in the original Hebrew, lines of the poem appear in alphabetical order…something like this:
Always I am
Beaten, but
Can I say to
Divinity, will I
Ever be able to
Find and enjoy
Growth in life?
As I was typing this, my phone rang. It was a former student who now serves as a pastor in a hurricane-damaged area. He said his wife and son were ignoring him. His neighbor was blaming him for yard trash caused by a fallen tree. No one in his congregation had checked on his well-being. He even went to the town office and found the place was closed. Equipment needed to clear the debris was too expensive to buy or rent. He closed the call by saying, “Thank you. I just wanted to tell someone.” Truth to tell, I was honored that he felt free to dump all this on me.
I mention this incident because I think God must have been pleased that the writers of Lamentations felt free to lay their genuine thoughts and feelings on God. I don’t have to pretend in front of God. I can unload my deepest hurt, my newest doubt, my daily weariness onto God’s open ears. What a gift! I don’t have to pretend in front of God!
What Someone Else Has Said: In The Christian Art of Dying (Eerdmans), Allen Verhey says “…Christian hope is not inconsistent with lament.” Then, he quote Clifton Black: “The spine of lament is hope: not the vacuous optimism that ‘things will get better,’ which in the short run is usually a lie, but the deep and irrepressible conviction in the teeth of present evidence, that God has not severed the umbilical cord that has always bound us to the Lord.”
Prayer: As you prepare this lesson, let your prayer begin: “Let me be truthful with You, Lord. Right now, some things are not going well. Where are You?...”