Lamentations 3:22–23
Written with the city still smoking.
It is because of Yahweh’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassion doesn’t fail.
What’s happening here
Lamentations is five poems of grief over the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon: the temple burned, the walls down, the people deported or dead. The writer, traditionally Jeremiah, does not soften any of it; the book includes lines about children starving. Chapter 3 is the center, and it is the only place hope appears. He has just said “my strength and my hope have perished.” Then: it is because of Yahweh’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed; they are new every morning. He is not saying things are fine. He is saying that waking up at all, in the ruins, is evidence that God has not finished with him. That is a far stronger claim than optimism, because of where it was made.
How it gets misread
Put on sunrise photographs as a general cheerfulness. It is a statement made in the worst circumstances in the Old Testament, and it means the most to people in the worst circumstances now.
How to use it
For the first mornings after a loss, a breakup, a diagnosis, when waking up means remembering. Not as a promise the day will be good, but that you were not abandoned in the night.
Read it with its neighbors
Context is the whole method. The search shows any verse with the ones around it.
Read Lamentations 3 in the search