Weeping, Lamenting, Awaiting restoration

Jeremiah, in His writing of Lamentations (at least most scholars believe he wrote it) lays out in prose form a beautiful and haunting lament for Israel. He starts with mourning the loss of what "beautiful Jerusalem" once was, then moves to reflecting and to some degree crying out for his own pain, his own suffering, but moves quickly to a place of awaiting God's promised restoration. It's an amazing book because it takes you through the emotions of the people of that day who still loved God and wanted to follow Him.

Its a book that shows the consequences of not following the law of God, of ignoring His decrees that were never meant or designed to restrict the people but to give them freedom from the snares of the enemy... both Spiritually and in the nations around them. It boggles my brain to think that even with all of Jeremiah's and (as I'm reading now) Ezekiels warnings and odd behaviours that demonstrated the calamity and captivity that was coming, the people still had the audacity to silence the prophets... Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel... each one dared to go against what all the false prophets were saying... "peace and safety... peace and safety" when the Lord was saying calamity and captivity, famine, war, and disease.

Is it simply man's desire (and by that I count myself as well) to believe that all will be well, and that disaster won't strike me? It might strike others, but not me. Isn't that what so many young people (alas; which I am no longer counted one of) say? I'm invinsible, I won't get hurt...

I think these last three books of the Bible are a wake up call. At least they are for me. Complacency is a killer. Believing that all will be the same from now til our deaths is ignorance. The Bible... especially the old testament... shows a God that is jealous for His people... not OF them but FOR them. It demonstrates a creator who LONGS for relationship with His created ones. He IS love. His judgements ARE loving. His anger NEVER lasts forever, but He WILL judge.

We are kidding ourselves if we believe that the world will remain as it is for the rest of our lives. We are listening to false prophets when they speak of peace and safety for all mankind. It's not what the Lord says in the Bible. It may be the Old Testament, but God is the same yesterday, today and forever. We are compromising everywhere throughout Canada and the USA. We are making laws and decrees that go directly against His Word.

Jeremiah's lament makes so much more sense to me now. today then it ever has. His heart is broken, as I said in an earlier post, because it didn't have to go that way. The people were given so many opportunities to turn and repent and cry out... and He would have relented. But they stubbornly and with ignorance (or was it arrogance?) kept moving away from God, forcing God's judgement to come. And it came. And as Jeremiah describes it in Lamentations, He cast the people to the four winds, scattering them throughout the earth.

But then... Ezekiel. I have noticed already in my first day of reading, (through to chapter 12) of Ezekiel, that this is the book where God explains what is behind the judgement. There is one phrase that keeps popping up "so that they may know that I am the Lord". God's judgement is not an end to itself... an "I told you so" kind of judgement. It's a longing and a desire for His chosen people to remember and recognize that He is God and there is no other and out of LOVE for them, he punishes and forgives once his anger is "spent".

He is a God to be feared, worshiped and honoured with reverance. He is Holy, He is Love, His is Righteous in all he does, and He is GOOD.

Wow.