It was a muggy night, and we sat on old couches from the 1970s in a concrete building. We had landed in Ivory Coast, West Africa, less than 48 hours before, and we were orienting our young missions team to each other and to their new field leaders. As we went around the circle, we learned about how God called each of us to Himself. Eventually, it was one of the team leaders’ turns to share, and he began to share how he first embraced the gospel after reading the book of Lamentations. That seemed so strange to me. Lamentations is so heavy and pessimistic, why would someone receive it as good news?. He told us that the unfiltered honesty of that book caused him to believe that Christianity must be real. The funny thing is, he wasn’t the last person who told me that Lamentations played a large role in their Christian conversion.
You see, Lamentations is powerful because it stares discontent in the face. We all experience moments when life seems to let us down. For the people of God, they had hoped that Jerusalem was going to be the solution to all their dreams. What promised to be the perfect city and the perfect temple wasn’t enough to keep them from going astray, and now the city lay in ruins. Lamentations is what poured out of the author as a result of the devastating emotions of it all.
Have you ever felt like life took a turn, that it can’t ever get back on track? Have you ever woken up and asked yourself, “Is this it? Is this all that life is about?” This week, we will explore ways that Lamentations and, more importantly, how God, can meet us in the middle of these emotions. Today, I invite you to simply follow the example of the scriptures. Lament. Speak to God your laments about life and the world and how things are. Tell him, like the biblical writer does, how you feel, and then check in tomorrow for more guidance from this amazing book.
by Aaron Bjorklund
