The weight of our current situation would have been unfathomable to many of us a few months ago. Normal. What is that word? What does it mean? I find when you are living with God, your normal is not normal. Your normal is sailing through a storm with your fishing lines still cast. It is riding in a car not going anywhere special, but seeing something special in the journey. It is flying with no parachute but knowing you will survive a crash. It is totally unordinary and seems completely mad sometimes.

Lament. Though I am not sure everyone knows the definition, we all know how it feels. Lament is a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. I won’t go into depth about what it looks like, but I am sure most people, especially right now know what it means to long for a loved one while not being able to see them, to have lost their job, or to be dealing with health issues. We know what it means to cry out in sorrow.

At this time perhaps we can relate to Jeremiah who wrote lamentations. Why, though would God put a book of lament in the Bible? Why would he call attention to our cries of pain?

Maybe God is acknowledging our pain. He is showing us he hears us. In Exodus 3:7-8, building up to the Passover, God says, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

God, our God knows our suffering. If we look at what Jesus suffered through here on earth, we can see he suffered almost every human affliction. He suffered so that he may understand our suffering.

Do you think you would have taken the cup that Jesus was dealt? Would you have given up the living water and traded it for the chalice of sin for the sake of humanity? Have we done that even on a smaller scale in our own lives?

Can we endure even if we don’t know what we are fighting for?

There looks to be no hope for us. What do we do now?

There seems to be no way out of this mess I’m in. How can I be set free?

We are wondering and wondering, but who knows the way?

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are made new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:21-23 ESV)

These verses found me. In the middle of my hopelessness. When I saw no end to the hurt. In the middle of a book of lament, there is a light.

“‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.'” (3:24)

In Leviticus, when the Lord was instructing Moses on how to make offerings, God would often set aside a portion for the Levitical priests so that they may be provided for. Although lamentations is in the old testament, it relates to us more in present day. Through Christ we have been made priests, in the way that we are able to meet with God. If you have accepted Christ you are the Temple, you are the Holy of Holies, and the Spirit dwells in you. That being our foundation, God has given us himself to be our portion so that we may live. He is our living water and our bread of life.

“The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.” (3:25)

Isn’t it beautiful though that when we seek him, if only just a little bit, that we find he’s been pursuing us all along. From before your ancestors were even a thought in anyone’s mind, God made a covenant with his people saying, “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from the burdens of the Egyptians.” (Exodus 6:7)

God wants to dwell in us. Look  at what lengths he has gone to to make us his children. Has he not also pinpointed the very moments in our lives and placed his hand where he needed? Perhaps we are not waiting at all, but simply living until God has seen to be the perfect moment to place a miracle in our lives.

“It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke of his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust there may yet be hope.” (v. 26-29)

I live for the moments when I am so blown away by the love of God that I fall to my knees, that I put my face to the ground and say what am I without you Lord. And even in the times where life is not going well, in the silence is where we find him.

The Message translation says versus 25-30 like this, “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 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.”

Have we in our lament, gone into a quiet place with the Lord? Have we let him comfort us? Or do we choose to look at the thing which scares us the most and not look away?

“For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the earth, to deny a man justice in the presence of the Most High, to subvert a man in his lawsuit, the Lord does not approve.” (3:31-36 ESV)

Take hope in the fact that the Lord does not delight in your sufferings, but even more so that the Lord suffered and was forsaken for your sake. Just so that he may know you better.

 

There are moments in life, short, yet so long, where we (or at least I) wander. Like a ship in a storm, with no sense of up and down, I lead myself into a trap of worry. I am the one who locks myself in my mind and it’s a wonder I ever make it out. It makes me realize how dependent I am on love and belonging. No matter the amount of hours I spend with friends or laughing at just about anything, I end the day by myself. Unfulfilled and utterly trapped in my own thoughts.

The reality is people cannot fix my problem, and that includes myself. The more I try to sow together an answer, the more I over analyse myself. I focus on my problem far more than on who can solve it. I long for constant love, for comfort from a ear that constantly listens, for a peace and a steadfast hand to guide me. I long to be put together.

God does not want me put together.

He wants to build me. To mold me into His creation. To make me more of Him so I can become more myself. The worry, the anxiety, it is not who we are. I fight on the daily to not concern myself with things of my future. I strive to not get my worth from those around me, especially friends. But, when I am by myself, no one to tell me what they truly think, I replace the uplifting words my loved ones said with lies.

I am constantly walking myself through my thought process in these moments. It never adds up; I have no reason to think this way. I have no inclination to think I am less than what I am.

But, isn’t that the beauty of being human. We try and try to explain and justify, yet in the end we have more questions, more places to let lies in. I am glad I do not have answers. I am glad I lack in knowledge. Because, as much as I try to calculate, life is not about making plans, it’s about living His out. Sometimes it takes being terrified for God to truly rescue you from fear.

I have only one suggestion to leave you with. Let God tear down your worry, your predetermined opinions of yourself, your thoughts. Let Him speak into your life, to move the mountains, to give you strength.

God is able to look at us, these imperfect, mangled, messes up every time He turns around humans, and chooses to love us. Not love us as in the way a human cares for another human. It is a love so indescribable and incomprehensible that we cannot possibly know its limits. God’s love is far beyond our definition of love. He takes the time to know us, to know who we truly are. That, my friends is not a distant God. He is intimate and He wants to speak with you. If God knows how many hairs are on our heads, don’t you think He also knows the thoughts inside them? And He still loves us.
Through God’s love we live. Matthew 22:37-38 says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” Then if we go further on in the Bible to 1 John 5:3- “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.” In a society where doing what you want overrides doing what is good for you, rules are not popular, let alone this list of 2000 year old commandments. Perspective plays a big role in our adherence to these laws. In the Old Testament following the law is regarded as a way to become closer to God, because there is less sin separating people from Him. However, when Jesus died for us we were gifted with the Holy Spirit and an opportunity to have an intimate relationship with God.

Something I know to be true about God’s love is that it makes you want to do crazy things. For some people that might be traveling across the world to tell people about Jesus or for others posting something on their social media about God when it’s extremely unpopular. However, what if it makes us want to do what God tells us? All those rules and regulations turn into guidelines from a loving Father when we embrace His love. When we are focused on seeking God and personal relationship with Him, obeying what God wants for us isn’t burdensome, it’s gratifying. The bottom line is God hates sin so much, but loves us far greater that He doesn’t want us trapped in it. So, what does that say about loving others and ourselves?

While there are a countless number of people who sit in sin and God tells us to separate ourselves from sin, He also calls us to love those people. What does God see when He looks at the face of His child that is wandering down the wrong path? In the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), the father shows blatant love for the child that runs toward a lust for life. The father runs to his son as he walks up with his guilt and shame. The father missed his son, even while he betrayed everything the father gave him. God sees the lost as His prodigal son. As soon as He sees them, though from a far, He runs to them. So the question is, are we going to be like the prodigal son’s brother and be taken over by envy, or can we view the lost and the broken like the Father does? Fall so in love with God that your heart breaks at the sight of one of His children giving into the temptations of this world. Weep for them, because through loving people like Jesus did we help them see who our God truly is. Hate sin as God does, because it hurts those He loves.

I need to be so absolutely saturated and consumed by God’s love, that I am able to see people and myself through His eyes. Letting this love guide me has been tough and I admit I have an endless amount of room to grow, but I know I’ve been set on the right path. Don’t take these words from a person who has mastered this area of their life, but from a person that is filled with the love of God and writes what God has set upon her heart.

The more I focus on loving God, the easier it is to love others unconditionally as if my heart becomes less a part of the world and more filled with Jesus. 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” In other words, build up your faith in God’s plan and have hope in His will, yet love so much it carries on into all of these areas.

In all things love needs to consume us. Over and over in the Bible it says God is love. How amazing is it to think that what we know of pure love is also true of our God and what is true of our God is also true of pure love? This universe we live in, the sunsets we see at the end of each day, the painted mountains, and the vast seas are all inklings of God’s love. My only hope is that I can be a mirror for it.