After some pretty long reads, it was nice to finish a book in just a couple of days! Welcome to book number 25, Lamentations.

It does sound particularly melancholy, but it is no more so than Jeremiah, I wouldn’t say!

We don’t know who wrote Lamentations, but we do know that it is comprised of five poems and that the writer witnessed and survived the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians.

I like books like Lamentations because I think a lot of people expect Christians to be happy smiley do-gooders. But the reality is that we experience sadness and disappointment like anybody else. Lamentations, and texts like it, allow us to feel sad and show us that lament is a part of our faith, because the world is a broken place.

Even so, there is hope within the grief. My favourite verse of this book, and also the words that my very favourite hymn is based on, is this:

Lamentations 2: 22-23: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.

In other words:

Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand has provided, great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!

Onto Ezekiel. See you in a couple of weeks!

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