Lamentations 3 is a description on how to have hope while grieving. Jeremiah and the people of Judah are grieving and broken over the destruction of Jerusalem. It is a time of shock, loss, and anguish. We have seen in our study of Lamentations that grief is not a straight line. We saw the prophet teaching the people in Lamentations 1 to offer their honest cries to the Lord. In Lamentations 2 we saw the prophet struggling with what God has done. But in the midst of this struggle, the prophet has proclaimed in Lamentations 3 that he will have hope when he sets his mind on the steadfast love of the Lord (cf. Lamentations 3:21-22). We noted in the last lesson from Lamentations 3 that the author speaks about the battle of the mind. When he thinks about his bitter affliction, then his soul is bowed within him. But when he thinks on the faithful love of the Lord, then he can have hope. This sets before us how the prophet teaches his readers to move forward with hope. The point of Lamentations 3 is not to simply think positive thoughts. The point is to realize the hope we can have because of God’s unchanging love and compassion for his people. But this hope is not theoretical. The rest of Lamentations 3 teaches us how to apply the knowledge of God’s steadfast and faithful love to our grief. Open your copies of God’s word to Lamentations 3 and we are going to finish our look at this lamentation and see how God’s character gives us hope through our grief…

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