“Bible promises: He will have compassion”
Lamentations 3:32-33
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Born on July 29th of 1861 in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, Alice Hathaway Lee was described as a beautiful and dainty young woman with gray-blue eyes and thin, blonde hair. She was tall, slim, and athletic, and especially good at tennis and archery. She played piano and loved boating. And since she had such a bright and engaging personality, her friends and family nicknamed her “Sunshine.”
Then in October of 1878, when she was all of seventeen, a cousin introduced her to one of his friends from Harvard, a nineteen-year-old fellow student named Theodore, as in Theodore Roosevelt.
And it was love at first sight! At least for Theodore. Later he said, “As long as I live, I shall never forget how sweetly she looked, and how prettily she greeted me.” Alice, however, needed a little more convincing.
For, just eight months later, in June of 1879, he proposed! But she wasn’t quite so sure. In fact, she thought about it, and thought about it, and thought about it some more, until finally, six months later(!), she said yes, she would marry him.
So in October of 1880, they tied the knot. When she was nineteen and he was twenty-two, they got married! They would honeymoon at his family’s estate at a place called “Tranquility.”
Three years later, in 1883, she became pregnant, and gave birth the following year, on February 12th of 1884, to a beautiful, eight pound, twelve ounce girl, and gave her her own name--Alice. But since Theodore was away on business up in Albany, he only learned of the good news by telegram.
But the next day, on February 13th, the family sent another telegram, this time telling him that his wife wasn’t doing so well anymore. Unbeknownst to any of them, she was suffering from what was called, back in the day, “Bright’s disease,” as in nephritis, inflammation of the kidneys. And just as soon as he rushed to be at her bedside, on February 14th, four years to the day after their engagement, she died at the age of twenty-two.
And on that day, in his journal, he wrote a simple, black “X,” and the words “The light has gone out of my life.”
Later he said, “She was beautiful in face and form, and lovelier still in spirit; as a flower she grew, and as a fair beautiful young flower, she died. Her life had been always in the sunshine; there had never come to her a single sorrow; and none ever knew her who did not love and revere her for the bright, sunny temper and her saintly unselfishness. Fair, pure, and joyous as a maiden; loving, tender, and happy as a young wife; when she had just become a mother, when her life seemed to be just begun, and when the years seemed so bright before her--then, by a strange and terrible fate, death came to her. And when my heart’s dearest died, the light went from my life forever.”
And because his daughter held the same name as his wife, from that day on he would never call her “Alice.” Instead, he always and only called her “Sister.”
Grief is a way we respond to loss. It’s the suffering we feel when someone or something has been taken away from us.
And along with grief comes all different kinds of difficult and unexpected emotions, like shock, anger, disbelief, guilt, and profound sadness.
And the reasons for grief are many--loss of our health, loss of a job, loss of a friendship, loss of a home, loss of a pet, loss of a child, and loss of a spouse. And from that moment on, life is never the same.
As one author wrote, “Inevitably, the grieving process takes time. Healing happens gradually; it can’t be forced or hurried--and there is no ‘normal’ timetable for grieving. Some people start to feel better in weeks or months. For others, the grieving process is measured in years. Whatever your grief experience, it’s important to be patient with yourself and allow the process to naturally unfold.”
The Bible has quite a lot to say about grief. Psalm 34 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). The apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). And Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
And here in our Bible promise for today, we find yet one more. It’s in the book of Lamentations chapter 3. It begins with this: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in Him” (Lamentations 3:22-24). Then it says, “For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though He cause grief, He will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast love; for He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of men” (Lamentations 3:31-33).
Let’s talk about the book of Lamentations for just a moment.
As far as we know, it was written by the prophet Jeremiah a little over five hundred years before Christ. But instead of being the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the lowest point in the history of Judah, just after the fall of its capital city Jerusalem--one of the most devastating events to ever happen in the history of the people of Israel.
As one commentator wrote, “Loss was total. Carnage was rampant. Cannibalism and sacrilege were twin horrors that stalked the streets. The desperate slaying of innocent children showed complete loss of respect for human worth, and the angry murder of priests showed absolute loss of respect for divine will.” And he wrote, “The worst that can happen to body and spirit, to person and nation, happened there.”
So suffice it is to say, the book of Lamentations is not only one of the saddest books in all of the Bible, it’s also one of the most painful. It’s a funeral dirge, a lament for the dead, a eulogy of pain and loss.
Even its name tells us something. In the Greek language, it’s called “Lamentations,” a word that means “grief,” “regret,” “mourning,” and “sorrow.”
But in the original language, the Hebrew language, it wasn’t called “Lamentations.” Instead, it was named after the first word of chapters 1, 2, and 4. It’s the word “How.” “How lonely sits the city that was full of people!” (Lamentations 1:1). “How the Lord in His anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud!” (Lamentations 2:1). And “How the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed! The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street” (Lamentations 4:1).
And not only was it a complete and utter loss for the people of Israel, it was a complete and utter loss for the prophet Jeremiah! For forty years he had preached to the people, proclaiming the Word of God and the need for his people to repent, but year after year after year, they ignored his constant words of warning. So God had no choice but to send King Nebuchadnezzar and his army to be His hand of judgment against the people.
So now, left with no food, no rest, no peace, no nation, and no leader, Jeremiah could do nothing but sit in a cave, overlooking what once was.
And he grieved! He grieved to see the rubble of the once glorious city God. He grieved over the dead and dying bodies strewn across the city streets. And he grieved over his people and his loved ones who had been taken captive to a pagan, gentile land, never to be seen or heard from again.
His family was gone. His friends were gone. And the beautiful city of Jerusalem, together with Solomon’s magnificent, golden temple, was left in dust and ashes.
So he wrote in chapter 1, “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the Lord inflicted on the day of His fierce anger” (Lamentations 1:12).
But later he writes this, God’s gospel promise: “For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though He cause grief, He will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast love; for He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of men” (Lamentations 3:31-33).
It’s been said that, if you live long enough, you’ll realize that life is full of losses. A missionary wife named Elisabeth Elliott wrote, “Let’s never forget that if we don’t ever want to suffer, we must be very careful never to love anything or anybody.”
And David Kessler, one of the world’s foremost experts on grief, wrote, “Love and grief are inextricably intertwined. The only way to avoid grief is to avoid love.” And he said, “If you love, you will one day know sorrow.”
And if you grieve, and when you grieve, know that you’re not alone. Job grieved the loss of his family. Naomi grieved the loss of her husband and sons. Hannah grieved to not have a son. David grieved at the loss of his son. Even Jesus grieved at the grave of His friend.
But even in our grief, know that the Lord is faithful. He walks with us even in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4). He knows all our sorrows and holds our tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8). He calls us to be still and to know that He is God (Psalm 46:10), that He’s our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble (Psalm 46:1), and that He’ll work all things together for our good, because we are part of His plan (Romans 8:28).
Born in 1866 in a simple log cabin in Franklin, Kentucky, Thomas Obadiah Chisholm never went to college. He didn’t even go to high school! Still somehow, he managed to become an elementary school teacher when he was only sixteen. Then when he was twenty-one, he became the associate editor of the Franklin Favorite, the local newspaper.
Six years later, when he was twenty-seven, after hearing a pastor preach, he came to Christ and believed. He even became a minister and served, for a short time, at a church in Scottsville, Kentucky. But since his health was so poor, he had to quit after only a year, and sold insurance instead.
In a letter dated in 1941, he wrote, “My income has not been large at any time due to impaired health, but I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God, for which I am filled with astonishing gratefulness.”
And out of all the books in the Bible, the book of Lamentations was one of his favorites. So when he wanted to write a hymn, (and he wrote quite a lot of them!), he used the words of Lamentations chapter 3, verse 23 as his inspiration. You know how it goes:
“Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with Thee; Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not; as Thou has been Thou forever wilt be. Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see; all I have needed Thy hand hath provided--great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!”
Or as the prophet Jeremiah once wrote: “For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though He cause grief, He will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast love” (Lamentations 3:31-32)
You have chosen, dear Father, to call us and to make us Your own. Grant that through all the trials and troubles of this life, we may find our hope and help in You, for Jesus’ sake. Amen