Lamentations 3
Saturday, August 28, 2010
August 28 ... Lamentations 1 - 3:36 "The Worst is Never the Worst"
Lamentations 1 1:1 - How empty the city, once teeming with people...1:8 - Jerusalem, who outsinned the whole world is an outcast. 1:9 - She played fast and lose with life; she never considered tomorrow. 1:16 She weeps buckets of tears and not one person cares for her soul. What are her tears for? What are my tears for this evening as I sit at a Starbucks contemplating my future? Are they for myself? If so, I will think no one cares for my soul. It's just not true because of Lamentations 3. 2:19 - Get up each watch night and pour out your heart face-to-face with the Master. Lift up your hands. Lift up your head.
Lamentations 3
Lamentations 3
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Taught school yesterday then drove straight to Brooke's birthday party in Ft Worth. so loved meeting her friends. Couldn't get to a computer & will post later. Didn't think about it.
ReplyDeleteCici is back home and we can't wait to hear the good news. Except, she has to fly back on Monday so we may not hear from her for a bit. Praying for you girl!
Beck's vigil is going on right now. What a privilege for Sylvia to be there. Can't wait to hear about it.
Too fast to go through Lamentations in 2 days.
ReplyDeleteChapter 1...Jerusalem is like an unclean woman.
Cutoff from others.
Cutoff from worship.
I hear the whisper of Hope in Lamentations...Jesus Saves.
He cleanses me of my unrighteousness.
He rescues me from my distress.
He avenges my adversary.
Just finished watching Restoring Honor, thinking of Sylvia and the hundred thousand there in attendance. It goes so perfectly with today's message of Good News: wait for Hope!
ReplyDeleteLamentations 3:22-30 God's loyal love couldn't have run out, his merciful love couldn't have dried up. They're created new every morning. How great your faithfulness! I'm sticking with God (I say it over and over). He's all I've got left. God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits, to the woman who diligently seeks. It's a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. It's a good thing when you're young to stick it out through the hard times. When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don't ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. Don't run from trouble. Take it full-face. The "worst" is never the worst.
He will never walk out and fail to return. Wait for hope!
Slipped into Starbucks for some time alone with God in this busy day anticipating our last day at church tomorrow. Came not to ask questions but to listen. Alone. Humbled. The gentleman behind me in line spoke up. "I just want you to know that I came here to sit at your table right there." The staff asked him if he wanted water and he replied no. So, he sits directly in front of me with his back to me. This is what his t-shirt read in all caps, each word about 3 inches tall: "GOD'S GOT YOUR BACK" That's it. His back sat in front of me for the past 30 minutes without moving. I hear you God---YOU are watching my back! He just got up and left. Thank you, God.
ReplyDeleteHe has your back, Bev. What a sweet strange gift this evening. He loves you. You are never alone. Wrestle with God and receive His blessing. Check your email. I left you a message. Love you, A
ReplyDeleteThat is so good, Bev. And today has been a monumental day for America. I started off this day deep in a long post on my blog about Jeremiah and Lamentations. Sorry, but I was in my King James Version. It is the only version that Lamentations sounds as solemn and holy as it must.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Jerusalem was like an unclean woman just stirred me. Lamentations 1:17 KJV.
I would be like that for all my life if not for my Jesus reaching down and cleansing me with HIS perpetual flow of Holy Blood. When we get to heaven, I will have had this experience of blood coursing through my veins. You will have had that experience. But not angels. Not satan.
Just us and Jesus. My blood is unclean. His is clean.
So thankful to know that the unclean woman...Jerusalem...and I...share the same hope. Christ is our Hope.
Beautiful that He cared so much for your pain tonight, sweet Bev.
Psalm 36
5-6 God's love is meteoric,
his loyalty astronomic,
His purpose titanic,
his verdicts oceanic.
Yet in his largeness
nothing gets lost;
Not a man, not a mouse,
slips through the cracks.
Bev, God has not lost you. His purpose is titanic. You will not slip through the cracks. He's definitely Got Your Back!
Thank You, God, for the ones who have prayed to honor You in America today. Let this movement go forth with Power from on high. So appropriate that we are in Lamentations and finishing Jeremiah at this crucial time in America's history. Father, we are not deaf to Your call to be holy. America honors You today. We are Your people. You are our God. We come back to You. In Jesus Name. Amen.
"But there's one other thing I remember, and remembering, I keep a grip on hope." Lamentations 3:21
ReplyDeleteAlong with Jeremiah and Lamentations, I've been reading C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
The conversation Shasta has with Aslan is so reassuring. Aslan invites him to: "Tell me you sorrows." Then he opens his eyes to see that He, Aslan, was the Lion that that was there all along...in every circumstance. "I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat...to receive you."
In Pilgrim's Progress, Christian and Hopeful have been captured by Giant-Despair and thrown into the dungeon of Doubting-Castle. They've been beaten and told they might as well take their own lives.
"Now a little before it was Day, good Christian, as one half amazed, brake out in this passionate speech; 'What a fool,' quoth he,'am I, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty? I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will I am persuaded open any lock in Doubting-Castle. Using the key, Christian and Hopeful escaped."
(I can't believe I'm just now reading The Chronicles of Narnia...love them!)
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mr. Beaver assures the children that the day will come when: "Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again."
Bev, praying that just as God has your back, He sees your tears and will come close. "You came close when I called out. You said, 'Its going to be all right." I so want that for you today!
Sorry for the long post today. Jeremiah and Lamentations are hard reads. They are meant to be. I just needed the encouragement I received from the books mentioned above. They helped me to remember:
"The 'worst' is never the worst."
FG