Tag: lament

Accept the Situation (Jeremiah 30:12-22)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

“This is what the Lord says:

“‘Your wound is incurable,
    your injury beyond healing.
There is no one to plead your cause,
    no remedy for your sore,
    no healing for you.
All your allies have forgotten you;
    they care nothing for you.
I have struck you as an enemy would
    and punished you as would the cruel,
because your guilt is so great
    and your sins so many.
Why do you cry out over your wound,
    your pain that has no cure?
Because of your great guilt and many sins
    I have done these things to you.

“‘But all who devour you will be devoured;
    all your enemies will go into exile.
Those who plunder you will be plundered;
    all who make spoil of you I will despoil.
But I will restore you to health
    and heal your wounds,’
declares the Lord,
‘because you are called an outcast,
    Zion for whom no one cares.’

“This is what the Lord says:

“‘I will restore the fortunes of Jacob’s tents
    and have compassion on his dwellings;
the city will be rebuilt on her ruins,
    and the palace will stand in its proper place.
From them will come songs of thanksgiving
    and the sound of rejoicing.
I will add to their numbers,
    and they will not be decreased;
I will bring them honor,
    and they will not be disdained.
Their children will be as in days of old,
    and their community will be established before me;
    I will punish all who oppress them.
Their leader will be one of their own;
    their ruler will arise from among them.
I will bring him near and he will come close to me—
    for who is he who will devote himself
    to be close to me?’
declares the Lord.
“‘So you will be my people,
    and I will be your God.’” (New International Version)

Jeremiah, by Marc Chagall, 1956

Once in a while, I get a response from a patient in the hospital who was given a poor diagnosis, or a very challenging prognosis, that goes something like this: “These doctors are always focusing on the negative. I’m only going to listen to the positive. I don’t need all that negative talk and energy.”

I believe in things like hope, optimism, and confidence. Yet, those qualities can only be acquired through the purgative force of hard circumstances and suffering. That means, in order to truly embrace the positive and encouraging, we need to first sit with the negative and discouraging realities in front of us.

Bottom line: It hurts to heal. Cuts need peroxide. Serious wounds need to be vacuumed. Severe internal issues require a surgery – being opened up – with a surgical knife, in order to get the body in a position to heal itself.

I find it curious that so many folks who believe in the Bible have never read the Old Testament prophets.

And very few preachers have never even given a sermon from the prophets. “It’s too gloom and doom, too negative. I focus on the positive and build up the church with New Testament truth!”

So, how’s that working for you? If there is a spiritual cancer that needs removal, it’s going to take some pain and hard treatment. And that is a lot of “negative” stuff.

There wouldn’t be a New Testament without an Old. I am suggesting that perhaps one reason why there is so much spiritual immaturity amongst many churches and Christians is that there is a lot of biblical illiteracy, due to the neglect of the prophets.

Without the prophets, we do not get a true feel for the pathos of God; that is, the Lord’s spiritual and emotional energy against injustice and oppression. And, practically speaking, it leaves us with neither resources nor skills to cope with adversity and trouble when it comes.

What do you do when you – or someone you love – hears that they have an incurable disease or condition?

Those without a solid grounding in the biblical prophets will likely want to rush to the places in Scripture that talk of answers to prayer and miracles and resurrections. But little do they realize that one cannot experience life apart from death, that there is no resurrection without a crucifixion, no positive glory without negative suffering.

No healing can take place if there is no pain of a cross.

Conversely, those who have become familiar with the message of the prophets are sure to respond to the incurable situation with expressions of personal grief and public lament, with humility and submission to the will of God.

Prayers will arise from deep within them that are grounded in the justice of God, and rely upon the promises of God. They will look to their inner spirit, without outwardly blaming God and medical staff for being uncaring and negative.

And, most of all, the spiritually and prophetically aware person will lean into their prodigious support system of a loving and gracious God, as well as the many persons who want to help.

The mature believer engages in a combination of submission and subversion – submitting completely to the will and ways of God, while simultaneously praying against the unfairness of disease, disaster, and death.

Healing and restoration will happen. The kicker is that we just don’t know the timing of any of it. We may not realize healing until the next life. Then again, we might experience a dramatic restoration of health and happiness, far beyond what we could ever ask or imagine.

The wise person learns to be patient, and wait for the proper time. They are comfortable with whatever timetable the Lord has for them. For what is most important to them is that they are close to the God who is near to the brokenhearted.

If we are guilty, we admit it, and seek to repair whatever damage may have been done. And if we are innocent, well then, we admit that we are not our own, but belong, both body and soul, to our faithful Creator.

Even in pain, we rest; even though suffering, we are at peace.

Accept the situation as it is, and not as you want it to be.

O God of love, you are the true sun of the world, evermore risen and never going down: We pray you to shine in our hearts and drive away the darkness of sin and the mist of error. We pray that we may, this day and all our lives long, walk without stumbling in the way you have prepared for us, which is Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God in glory everlasting. Amen. – A prayer of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536)

Overwhelmed with Grief (Jeremiah 20:14-18)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

Cursed be the day
    on which I was born!
The day when my mother bore me,
    let it not be blessed!
Cursed be the man
    who brought the news to my father, saying,
“A child is born to you, a son,”
    making him very glad.
Let that man be like the cities
    that the Lord overthrew without pity;
let him hear a cry in the morning
    and an alarm at noon,
because he did not kill me in the womb;
    so my mother would have been my grave
    and her womb forever pregnant.
Why did I come forth from the womb
    to see toil and sorrow
    and spend my days in shame? (New Revised Standard Version)

Perhaps you feel as though you must put on a good face, a decent front for others to see. It could be that you don’t like other people seeing you upset or cry because it can be embarrassing. Maybe you believe others don’t need to be burdened with your sadness. The last thing you want is to be a killjoy.

Sometimes you might even put up a front with God. Maybe you think God wants everyone to be perpetually happy and always sing with the birds in blissful joy and gladness, or whistle while you work. However, that would not be an accurate view of God.

One of the most faithful people in Holy Scripture, Jeremiah, freely and unabashedly lamented before God – to the point of wishing he were dead. Jeremiah, the incredible prophet of God, closer to the Lord than anyone of his generation, was so despondent and ashamed that he wished he had never even born. The suffering and the shame were just too overwhelming.

To say that Jeremiah had a difficult ministry is a gross understatement. He literally had the ministry from hell, prophesying to people who neither liked him, nor his message to them. In the middle of it all, Jeremiah threw up his hands and let out his complaint to God. Jeremiah was in such ministerial misery that he wished he had been a stillborn baby.

Lest you think Jeremiah was sinfully depressed or just cuckoo, he is far from alone in the Bible. King David had no scruples about letting God know how he felt about his dire circumstances. Job, likely the most famous sufferer of all, spent time doing nothing but lamenting his terrible losses for months. What all three of them have in common is that they openly grieved with great tears, yet neither cursed God nor forsook the Lord.

Lamentation is the sacred space between intense grieving to God without blaming the Lord for our significant changes and losses in life. I would even argue that lamenting and grieving before God is a necessary spiritual practice which needs full recognition in the Body of Christ. Please sit with that last statement for a bit and consider how it might become a reality in your own life and context.

Grief can and does attach itself to any change or loss. It is the normal emotional, spiritual, physical, and relational reaction to that injury of the heart. There is only one way through grief. We must tell our story to another. It is both biblical and quite necessary.

Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:2, NRSV

We need our own spirituality to support us in such times – not drive us away through a misguided theology of believing you must keep a stiff upper lip. It is critical to have safe and supportive persons in our lives when going through overwhelming circumstances.

“Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.”

Brené Brown

Our tears are holy. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. The prophet Jeremiah was doing a very godly thing in expressing his grief. And Jeremiah’s lament is what helped steel him for the several attempts on his life that he faced.

Let the tears do their intended work in your life.

God of all, you feel deeply about a great many things. As your people, we also feel a great depth of emotion when our lives go horribly awry from our dreams and expectations. Hear our lament as we pour out our grief before you, through Jesus, our Savior, with the presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Celebration and Lament (Matthew 2:13-18)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
Coptic Church depiction of the holy family in Egypt

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi.Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
    wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” (New Revised Standard Version)

Smack in the middle of the great celebration of Christ’s birth is a great lament. That’s because not everyone views the birth of Jesus with joy; there are others who see it as a threat and want to stamp it out.

We are humans, with two ears, two eyes, two hands, two feet, two lungs, and two kidneys. Our paired organs exist because we need the two of them in order to function properly. Joy and sadness, celebration and lament, are emotionally paired so that our soul may serve us as it is intended to. We hold them both together – at the same time, all the time – in order to have a well-rounded and healthy way of life.

In this time of year, it can be easy to gravitate towards either one or the other. We might become engrossed in all the shiny things of the season; or we may get lost by all the sorrows which the season stirs up for us.

I invite you to approach the mundane and simple manger. Although it might seem dull and unattractive – the last place you may find wholeness and peace – it is truly the place where we find God. It is here that both our joys and our sorrows meet, because among the stinky animals and the lower class life we shall actually discover the real longing of our hearts.

The gracious and almighty God preserved and protected the child Jesus. Christ’s early life retraced the life of ancient Israel. Like the Jewish patriarchs, Jesus went down to Egypt (and would eventually go down and face hell for us in his crucifixion); and, like the ancient Israelites, Jesus was brought up out of Egypt (and would rise from the dead bringing freedom from sin and death once for all) in a New Exodus.

It is as if the disciple Matthew means to connect the two Testaments as a unified whole by saying, “Look, here is the Messiah, the coming King, the promised One of Israel and of all the nations. Jesus is our salvation, the fulfillment of all that we have hoped for.”

Jesus is the New Exodus

In the second of three dreams, Joseph is told to take Jesus to Egypt. Joseph obeyed the Lord and took responsibility for the role of protecting Jesus, as contrasted with Herod’s role in attempting to murder Jesus.

Yet, there is more to this story than Christ’s protection; this is the fulfillment of a biblical pattern, an identification of Jesus with the people of God. Matthew pulled forward the prophet Hosea to say that just as God brought the Israelites out of Egypt through a great deliverance, God brought up Jesus, the Great Deliverer, out of Egypt as the unique Son of God.

Ethiopian Orthodox icon of the holy family fleeing to Egypt

When we hold the pair of Testaments together in both hands, we feel the weight of Jesus as God’s divine Son; so therefore, Christ is the rightful Ruler in God’s kingdom.

Just as God preserved Israel from Pharaoh’s wrath, the Lord protected Jesus from Herod’s wrath. God’s kindness and loyalty extends to us as covenant people and preserves us from the wrath of the devil who seeks to keep as many people as possible in the realm of darkness.

Our hope is in the Lord Jesus, who conquered the devil by establishing a beachhead on this earth through an incarnation as the Son of God.

Jesus Brought Us Out of Exile

The scoundrel King Herod massacred innocent toddlers to ensure the destruction of Jesus. Behind his atrocity was the devil himself, who knew Jesus was the coming king who would one day bring salvation. Reflecting on a vision of Christ’s birth, the Apostle John identified the sinister plan and the divine deliverance:

The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that when she gave birth, he might devour her child. She gave birth to a son, a male child who is to rule all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was snatched up to God and his throne. (Revelation 12:4-5, CEB)

Satan wars against God’s Son and God’s people, whose roots go all the way back to the first prophecy of Christ after the Fall of humanity. God declared to Satan:

“And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike your head,
    and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15, NLT)

There has been continual enmity ever since, between the serpent and the seed of the woman. It manifests itself with the Israelites constantly being threatened with extermination and tempted to conform to pagan ways.

King Herod was just another in a long line of demonically animated persons trying to perpetuate the kingdom of darkness. We must take this threat seriously because the devil knows that his time is short. A second Advent is coming which will be the final judgment.

Satan’s most powerful weapon, death, has lost its sting because of Jesus. Christmas is a hard time of year for many people, filled with depression instead of joy, grieving over lost loved ones for whom we will not spend another Christmas with.

Yet there is a reunion coming, the hope of a bodily resurrection in which we will be with Jesus and God’s people forever. Be encouraged to understand that there is no time in heaven; it will be only a moment and the people who have gone before us will turn around and see us; we will one day join them.

Matthew also used the prophet Jeremiah to communicate hope. Jeremiah’s prophecy dealt with children who were lost in war to the invading Babylonians. The prophecy is a lament with the hope that captivity will not be forever.

The disciple Matthew wanted us to see that the exile is over for us; Jesus has arrived, and the tears which were shed will shortly dry up. There may be a time of suffering we must endure, but there will be glory. Jesus is the Great Deliverer who brings us out of sin’s captivity and into the promises of God. He is our hope.

Jesus is the promised One who will deliver us from the tyranny of the devil. Christ is the hope of the nations, the Savior of the world. So, let us come back to the first Christmas which was the beginning of the end for evil on the earth.

Believers in Jesus are part of God’s victory, and they overcome the evil one by the blood of the lamb, acknowledging that Christ’s incarnation was essential for us. 

Just as Jesus made a radical break with his former life in heaven through the incarnation, we, too, must break with our old way of life.

God will save the people through this child Jesus. The greatest gift we can give in this season and throughout the coming year is the gift of grace, the presentation of the Christ child.

Loving God, help us remember the birth of Jesus so that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds, and the wisdom of the wise men.

Close the door of hate and open the door of love across the world.

Let kindness come with every gift and good desires with every greeting.

Deliver us from evil through the blessing of the Christ child.

Teach us to be happy with pure hearts.

Grant us grateful thoughts, devoted hearts, and gracious hands, through Jesus our Savior in the might of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Struggling to Accept (Habakkuk 2:1-5)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
The prophet Habakkuk cries out to God, by Unknown 19th century artist

I will stand at my guard post.
I will station myself on the wall.
I will watch to see what he will say to me
and what answer I will get to my complaint.

Then the Lord answered me,
“Write the vision.
Make it clear on tablets
so that anyone can read it quickly.
The vision will still happen at the appointed time.
It hurries toward its goal.
It won’t be a lie.
If it’s delayed, wait for it.
It will certainly happen.
It won’t be late.

“Look at the proud person. He is not right in himself.
But the righteous person will live because of his faithfulness.
Also because wine is treacherous
he is arrogant and never rests.
He has a large appetite like the grave.
He is like death—never satisfied.
He gathers all the nations to himself.
He collects all the people to himself. (God’s Word Translation)

The prophet Habakkuk is unique among the prophetic books of the Old Testament. It is more an account of the prophet’s own wonderings and questions before God, than it is bringing a specific word from God to the people.

The book of Habakkuk revolves around the prophet’s queries to the Lord; the Lord’s responses; and the prophet’s struggles to wrap both his head and his heart around those answers.

Habakkuk struggled with the rampant sins of injustice and unrighteousness amongst his own people. He contended with God about how long all this was going to go on. Today’s Old Testament lesson is something of a lament – grieving the loss of justice and righteousness, and longing for God’s salvation from the nation’s troubles. Habakkuk was determination to name the evil, bring it before God, and wait with a determined spirit for a divine response.

The prophet asked a question, and waited for an answer. His complaint is an age old one. He was weary of seeing injustice day after day, of observing the arrogant and the wicked exploit the poor and the needy. He wanted to hear from God; and when the awaited response finally came, it wasn’t what Habakkuk was expecting.

Habakkuk’s first question is one that many today can relate to:

How long, O Lord, am I to cry for help,
but you will not listen?
I cry out to you, “There’s violence!”
yet you will not come to the rescue.
Why do you make me see wrongdoing?
And why do you watch wickedness? (Habakkuk 1:2-3, GW)

God answered the prophet’s question. And Habakkuk didn’t like the answer, at all:

I am going to send the Babylonians,
that fierce and reckless nation.
They will march throughout the earth
to take possession of lands that don’t belong to them. (Habakkuk 1:6, GW)

The problem with this answer, is that, even though the prophet’s own people were unjust and violent, the Babylonians were an even worse lot of people. It was nonsense to Habakkuk that God would use an evil nation to judge God’s own people. So, the prophet asked yet another question of God:

Why do you keep watching treacherous people?
Why are you silent when wicked people swallow those
who are more righteous than they are? (Habakkuk 1:13, GW)

There are many persons who freely admit they are sinful. There is a problem, however, when a person points to others whom they believe are more sinful than they are. Habakkuk, like many contemporary believers, essentially says, “Well, I’m a sinner. I’m not perfect. But I’m not like the Babylonians! They don’t even worship God! And they do a lot worse things than I do!”

If one wants divine judgment, then one must be content with whom it comes from, and how it is done. Otherwise, the person seeks to be the judge, instead of letting the Lord handle the trouble.

We all struggle with navigating the injustice of this world. People of faith will discern that they must trust the Lord by viewing God’s deliverance and actions with a big picture perspective. They remember that God has acted with faithfulness and justice in the past; and the Lord can do it again.

Believers may have to endure some dark valleys, hard circumstances, and plenty of suffering; yet they trust that God will show up. They only need to wait patiently for divine deliverance. Eventually, we all need to conclude with the prophet, after waiting and wrestling over God’s divine plan for the situation we don’t like:

Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
    he enables me to tread on the heights. (Habakkuk 3:17-19, NIV)

The prophet finally accepted the words of God; and, despite the circumstances, this willingness to receive those words opened to him the possibility to take joy and confidence yet again in the Lord.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right If I surrender to His will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.