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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion March 7, 2006 God is steadfast love |
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Frontline Devotions for Tuesday, March 07, 2006 by Susan Hill
Reprinted from Saturday, July 23, 2005
Lamentations
3:22-33
Sometimes it seems like God is against us. Life takes unexpected
turns, and we think it’s God’s doing. We are resentful and angry and
accuse God. We argue, we cry, we become depressed. We wonder how we
will ever feel better and can’t understand how God could possibly cause bad
things to happen.
A deaconess friend of mine likes to say that God can take it when we lash out in
this way…she assures me it’s OK to lament like the writer of today’s
passage, to lay it all at God’s feet and demand “why?”
The Lamentations writer suggests that in addition to being complainers, however,
we are also a people of hope. We may get to a point in our railing against God
when we can stop long enough to remember God’s promise to stay with us.
It is this promise of God’s abiding that sustains our writer amidst the
unabated pain of the earlier verses in chapter 3.
For a time then, the lamentations grow quiet while the suffering one repents and
awaits God’s mercy. It is the mercy that grows out of God’s love … a love
that overcomes God’s anger and disappointment.
This Old Testament point of view reminds us of the “give and take” between
God and God’s people in the ancient world and in our own time. There is
palpable comfort in being close enough to God to converse. There is also comfort
in the reality of the words of lament, they tell the truth, they make space for
our emotions, and they connect us to one another and to God. Walter Bruggeman
writes, “…our flesh next to your presence … and so healed, our failures
next to your body … and so transformed, our shadowed life next to your
generative self …and so made new…your newness bodily overrides our
deathliness.” (Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth, 2003) It is awesome and
powerful to pray to God who hears our complaints, stands beside us, and responds
out of love.
Prayer:
Our hearts are often heavy, Lord, and we need your steadfast love right by our
side. Thank you for making your presence known to us. Thank you for those who
have gone before us and whose words tell us of your care through the ages. Amen
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