READ: Lamentations 1
Verses
chosen for meditation: Lamentations 1:1-2
1 How lonely sits the
city
that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become,
she who was great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
has become a slave.
2 She weeps bitterly in
the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has none to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
they have become her enemies.
REFLECT
Lamentations
compiles intense poems about events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in
587 BC, due to God’s judgement after generations of unfaithfulness
and repeated breaking of the covenant despite many warnings from God.
In
Chapter 1, the anguished woman (referring to Zion) personifies Jerusalem. We can
read this chapter like we are attending a funeral service. The bereaved lady Zion
cries out over her loss of everything: her husband, her children (Jerusalem’s
citizens), her possessions (plundered riches). Her husband may well be God, likening
the covenantal relationship between Israel and God to a marriage.
She
became like a widow (v1), having no one to comfort her, alluding to God’s
silence in this suffering. She can’t find this comfort among her lovers (v2).
The mention of lovers implies unfaithfulness and adultery, with worship of
other Gods, idolatry and allying with other nations instead of listening to
God. Just as she betrayed God, these lovers betrayed her.
Usually
in a funeral service, we comfort the grieving. In this service, not only were
there no comforters, but there’s mockery and gloating over her suffering,
adding salt to injury. Lady Zion admitted that she deserved it due to her
rebellion (Lamentations 1:18). She did not think that her suffering was unjust,
but called on God to judge other evil nations as well (Lamentations 1:22).
RELATE
We
rarely see laments of the kind in this book today. Is it because we don’t live
in a country swallowed by war and poverty? Or is it that we feel it’s wrong to
be like that in front of God? If it’s the latter, perhaps we think God is not
big-hearted enough to hear certain prayers, especially those with protests. Or
perhaps we think we must be collected and proper before we come to God, choosing
our words carefully.
God’s
silence in the whole book does not mean disapproval of the laments. In fact,
God included this book as part of His word, which validates even more the voice
this book gives. A voice for the voiceless amidst the violence. God refrains
from interrupting, explaining or correcting, lending full voice to the
sufferers. This should be seen not as divine deafness, but divine restraint. The
book voices the pain of those suffering the consequences of their sin and those
caught as part of collateral damage. When we use prayer as a space to lament
like that and voice our confusions, we learn that we can be brutally honest and
bring our raw emotions before God. As Psalms 56:8 puts:
You
have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your book?
Lamentations
is that book, validating all our tears. Not only tears of repentance, but tears
of frustration, anger and confusion. God holds these tears like they are
precious. Silent He may be at times, but He’s not absent and aloof. He meets us
at our pain. We can bare it all to God, like how lady Zion did.
In
lady Zion’s cry, there is confession. She can’t deny her failures and neediness,
which is something only God can fully grasp and heal. These confessions admit
our need for God to keep out of sin’s way and for healing. However, some
suffering makes no sense to us, much like the exiles suffering under the sins
of others. Hence, we also hear protests in the laments, like in Psalms and Job.
These
protests are not blaming God for the wrongs we see. Rather, It’s faith seeking
understanding, asking why some wrongs happen. It’s not denying God’s sovereignty
and goodness. In fact, the protests are based on faith in God’s sovereignty and
goodness, hence the confusion being voiced. It is to boldly hold up before God
the atrocities faced in the now that seem to contradict his character. Such is biblical
lament. It is faith struggling between what we know is true about God, and the
realities of what we see and experience in this fallen world.
As
we lament this way, processing our emotions and grief with God, we open the doors
to healing. We must not suffer in silence and must learn to process it with
God. May we see the importance of lament in our prayers and as we read on, may
we pay heed to those anguished today, and weep together with them.
REST
Weep With Me by Rend Collective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0gApOf_NBw
Chris
Chong
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