Over the next few weeks in our Rooted in Christ Study, we’ll be looking at some of the favorite passages from our staff at St. Matthew’s UMC. These are some of the parts of the Bible to mean to most to our staff.

Today’s reading is Lamentations 3: 20-26

Lamentations reminds me a little of Ecclesiastes, in that this passage needs to be understood in the greater context of the book.  Lamentations is what it says that it is.  This is a book of weeping, one of the most painful books in all the Bible.  In this book, Jeremiah is watching Jerusalem be destroyed.  This is a book where pain just leaps off the page.

Yet in the midst of all this pain, we read these verses here.  Morning by morning new mercies I see.  Hope in the midst of the pain. Confidence in the hand of God in the midst of hurt and confusion.  Trust in God in the middle of darkness.

We wait for the Lord.   Even when it hurts.  Even when it is hard.  Even when we don’t understand. Because God is not done yet. God is finished yet. This moment, our current circumstance, this is not the totality of our story, or of God’s work in our lives.  Hold on.  Hold fast.  It may be night now.  But mercy comes in the morning.  God’s mercy comes in the morning.  Hold on to that in the dark.

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