I don’t like mud. Florida has thick mud along the shorelines of the Intracoastal. We bought a Jon Boat off Facebook and slowly learned to fish. It took a few trips to get the hang of the incoming and outgoing tides. If you’re having a good time fishing in the shallow water, you can quickly lose track and get landlocked in a low tide. That happened to us once, and we had to wait a few hours for the water to rise. We tried to walk along the shore and fish, but there were places where the mud was deep, like a false floor. One step and you’re up past your knees, and you can’t move. The only way I could get out was to sit on my rear and slowly lift each foot out. Then you do an army crawl or a roll to firmer ground.
Dark. Muddy. Stuck. That’s where Jeremiah was. What did he do? Lamentations chapter 3 may give us a clue. Lamentations was Jeremiah’s second book, made up of 5 poems of sorrow, like a funeral dirge, mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. Each chapter was structured as an acrostic, following the Hebrew alphabet sequence. So, the first word of the first verse in chapter one, starts with the first letter, Aleph. The second verse begins with the second, Bet, and so on. Chapter three falls in the middle of the book.
Lamentations 3:52-53 – They tried to end my life in a pit and threw stones at me; the waters closed over my head, and I thought I was about to perish.
Did they throw stones at him as he sank in the mud? Possibly. Maybe some loose rocks fell on his head as they moved a larger stone to cover the mouth of the cistern. As he sank, he thought he would die.
Lamentations 3:55-57 – I called on your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit. You heard my plea: “Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.” You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear.”
When life is on the line (think marriage, family, calling, future, faith), we do things we usually wouldn’t do. In desperate times, we don’t act like we’re sitting by the pool with a diet Pepsi. Jeremiah called and cried out from the depths of the pit, like you did as a child when you woke up in a dark room after a bad dream. “Dad! Mom!” It’s not about loudness. It’s about our heart reaching out to the only one who can deliver.
In that forgotten place, we read, “You came near…” The glory of God’s grace showed up in that forsaken place. The mud grew a little warmer. The darkness didn’t seem so dark. There was another in the pit, holding him so he wouldn’t go under.
Then he heard the words, “Do not fear” and the muddy rut became a sanctuary. Instead of sinking he was standing on holy ground. Possibly, looking back on this moment of deliverance, Jeremiah wrote these precious words that fall in the middle of Lamentations.
Lamentations 3:21-24 – Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”
Why does suffering come our way? We live in a fallen world. But in the hands of God, every painful circumstance can be used for good. In those times we experience the beauty of the glory of God in a way we never would sitting on the couch watching a football came, eating a bowl of nachos.
Four words jump out.
Love. There, in the pit, Jeremiah felt the great love of God. Paul said we experience this same thing when the love of God is poured into our hearts by the power of the Spirit (Romans 5:5). The Hebrew word is hesed, and it’s a loyal, covenant love. This isn’t a groovy kind of love like Phil Collins sang about. It is a commitment to show up, sacrifice, and care for those we call family.
Compassion. Jeremiah said, “his compassions never fail.” The Hebrew word is rachamim. It comes from the word rechem, which means “womb.” We think of the great compassion a mother has for the child of her womb. We see this deep connection in the words “wom-an” and “wom-b.” Men have a difficult time feeling such tender kindness, but this is the kind of compassion God has for us. Like a mother lifting her child from the crib in the morning, the Lord’s compassions are new each day.
Faithfulness. The treasured hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” was inspired by these verses. At Jeremiah’s lowest point, God showed himself to be faithful, trustworthy, and reliable. The Hebrew word is emuna, and from it comes the word Amen, or “so be it.” We end our prayers this way as a declaration of faith that God is forever constant, faithful, and will do what he promised.
Portion. Jeremiah said, “The Lord is my portion.” He had nothing materially sitting in the bottom of the pit But he had the Lord, the loving, compassionate, faithful God. And so he declared, “Lord, you’re all I have and all I’ll ever need. You are my portion.”
Then Jeremiah wrote…
Lamentations 3:58 – You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.
To be continued…
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