Picture this hypothetical scene with me: It is mid-19th century and you are living on a large and beautiful plantation in a southern state. Your farm consists of hundreds of acres of good, tillable soil that generates a good income. Your daughters are beautiful and your sons are brilliant, and you have planned to leave a generous inheritance to each of them. Your wife is a charming “southern belle.” Your plantation is self-contained with delicious drinking water from deep artesian wells; and you warm yourself by the side of your hearth where fires fueled by wood hewn in your fruitful forests keep your family warm.
Now, with that pleasant picture in mind, try to imagine with me how you would feel if suddenly, virtually overnight, foreigners came onto your elegant estate and forced you to abandon your home to them. These ruthless strangers proceed to eliminate you, leaving your dear wife without a husband. Your sons they humiliate and your daughters they violate. They confiscate your property, cutting down trees and selling the wood. They commandeer your wells, and your wife and children have to buy a drink from these awful intruders to assuage their thirst. The inheritance that you had worked hard to save up to give to your sons and daughters they have squandered. Your family suffers daily from hunger. There is now no joy at all left in life for your loved ones!
If you think that’s unreal, it’s not! That’s a picture of what happened to Judah when God opened the flood-gates of divine chastisement upon His people and allowed Nebuchadnezzar to come into the holy land to take over. Someone has called the book of Lamentations “the Wailing Wall of the Old Testament.” Chapter 5 draws the conclusion to the sad lament, ending, though, on a note of praise and prayer:
• Their Problem once again, v. 1
“Behold our reproach,” v. 1
“Thou hast utterly rejected us” v. 22
“Thou art very wroth against us” v. 22
The cause of it: sin, vss. 7,18 (Provs.14:3)
The completeness of it: total! vss. 1-18 (Jer.24:9)
• Their Praise, v. 19 (cf. 3:22-25)
For God’s mercies, 3:22a, 23a
For God’s compassions, 3:22b
For God’s faithfulness, 3:23b
For God’s goodness, 3:25
For God’s eternality, 5:19
“When time and history shall be no more; when the earth has melted and vanished and the heavens have been rolled up like a scroll; when the last soul has been judged and assigned his place of eternal abode; when Satan shall have been cast into the Lake of Fire and when sin and sickness, death and disease, sorrow and disappointment, fear and failure, trials and tears shall have vanished, the Lord God will remain still on His throne; and He will rule, King of Kings and Lord of Lords!”
• Their Prayer, v. 21
“Remember us,” 5:1
“Consider us,” 5:1b
“Turn us,” 5:21
“Renew our days,” 5:21
“Guide me O Thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land; I am weak but Thou art mighty, hold me with Thy powerful hand.”
“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22,23)
YOU and GOD 