Finding Hope

I don’t know if you’ve read the whole of Lamentations 3. If you have, you may feel it describes what a lot of your days are like. The writer is having a bad day, maybe a bad week or year; nothing seems to be going right for him. Maybe this is how you are feeling in this season. 

Verse 18 sums it all up: So I say, “My splendour is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD.” It is a sign of great despair when we lose hope, we feel trapped in a pit with no way out. Lost, lonely and hopeless. 

That moment of hopelessness though, is the beginning of a transformation. In his hopelessness the writer begins to remember something. As he remembers he begins, once again, to have hope. 

“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope” (v21)

What he remembers is the steadfast, eternal love of the Father. That changes everything. Once again he recognises that God is faithful, that he is loving and compassionate, and that he is the provider.

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. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” (Lamentations 3:22-24)

That recognition brought redemption for Jeremiah and it will do so for us.