A Lamentation

This should have been posted on Friday, when we read Lamentations 1 and 2.

 If we are just casually reading our Bibles, it may be hard for us to imagine the destruction of Jerusalem.  Those events seem distant and far away.  Clips from this summer's nightly news, however, give us a clearer picture of what the destruction of a city looks like.  With those images in my mind, phrases like "How doth the city sit solitary" and  "how she is become as a widow"  [Lam 1:1] become more powerful than before.  They take my breath away. 

The children say, "Where is corn and wine?" [2:12] from a mountain top in northern Iraq.  Children and elders, mothers and fathers have "swooned as the wounded  in the streets of the city" [2:12] in Africa, in Syria, in Jordan, in Missouri, and in the Holy Land itself.  It does seem to us as though "the enemy prevailed" [1:16], even though we are not always sure who or what the enemy is. 

The poet tells us that Jerusalem weeps; her friends have been treacherous; her gates are desolate; she is bitter.  When we are grieving, most of us feel much the same.  We need to weep, to question, to blame and to be in distress.  We may feel distant from God and  question what we perceive to be God's silence.

All of this makes me think of Elijah in the wilderness.  He didn't find God in the clash and bang of wind earthquake and fire [1 Kings 19], but in the silence.  Out of the silence, God commissions Elijah to go and do.  What commission do you think God has for us in our grief and  in these times?