He has made me chew on gravel. He has rolled me in the dust…. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:the faithful love of the Lord never ends! Lamentations 3:16, 21-22 NLT
Jeremiah had been predicting it for at least 30 years: if the Judeans did not turn from their sins, they were going to be devastated by the Babylonians. Now it had finally happened. After an 18-month siege, the Babylonians had captured Jerusalem, burned down the almost 400-year-old Solomonic temple and destroyed the city itself.. The tragedy is commemorated in the Biblical book of Lamentations. We don’t know the author, but tradition says it was Jeremiah.
As we read the book, a number of lessons can be learned. The first one is about causes. Who caused the terrible things we read about in the book? Look carefully at the passage printed above. Who is the subject? We might think it is the Judeans with their sin, or the Babylonians with their violence and greed. But no, it is Yahweh, isn’t it? “You did this to us!”
What is the importance of this truth? Think about it; who is in charge in the universe? Is it us? Is it our enemies? None of the above! Yahweh is in charge. But what does that mean? Is Yahweh the great puppet master, pulling the strings and making us jump (while giving us the illusion of choice?) No! We have real choices to make, and real consequences to bear. But doesn’t that mean that God is just a spectator, watching what happens as a result of our choices? It does not! Everything that happens comes through Yahweh’s hands. He determines the form of the consequences and how they will impinge upon us. Sometimes he chooses to intervene and alter the way the consequences play out, and sometimes he chooses not to intervene. But he is in charge!
What does this mean? It means that since God is at work in all things, and since he is good, we can trust him with the outcome. It is God (not my sin, and not Babylon) who has broken my teeth with gravel; therefore, I can believe that he can do something about that. Because he is responsible (in the end) for your situation, you can trust him to triumph over those circumstances and do good in the end.
Called To Be Transformed 