"How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies." Lamentations 1:1-2
The desolate city is both reality and metaphor for the desperate state of people in the travail of sin and judgment. In Chapter One of Lamentations Jeremiah makes a methodical movement (Each verse of Chapter One begins with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.) from the grief he feels over Jerusalem’s loss of glory to the awareness of his own sin and God’s judgment, to a plea for God to bring awareness and judgement on those who carry their injustice and violence out upon others without concern for Him.
"See, O LORD how distressed I am! I am in torment within, and in my heart I am disturbed, for I have been most rebellious. Outside, the sword bereaves; inside, there is only death. People have heard my groaning, but there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my distress; they rejoice at what you have done. May you bring the day you have announced so they may become like me. Let all their wickedness come before you; deal with them as you have dealt with me because of all my sins. My groans are many and my heart is faint." Lamentations 1:20-22
Sometimes I think I live in Paradise…Lost. I fear to give too much weight to the world at my door and forcing its way in through print, image, and sound. Nairobi, Columbia, Baghdad, Kandahar, Jerusalem, Beijing, D.C., Hollywood, Toronto, New Orleans, Paris. Do I have solutions? So I fear to give too much consideration to the burden of rebellion my own heart bears when I have abandoned God’s way. Do I have solutions? Oh that I would pray with the strength, wisdom, and honesty of Jeremiah. Eyes open, spirit sensitive, mind penetrated by the Truth. I can pray at all the intersections of my own heart and world in Vancouver…Glen Park, Main and Terminal, Fraser St., Main and Hastings, Main and King Edward… I can pray and ask God that I might feel with Him a measure of the grief that is His because of the condition of my community. I can pray trusting that just as I have not been crushed by the knowledge and honest confession of my own sin, I may share in His knowledge and truth of my community without being crushed.
This is the Gospel. No heads in the sand.
