We will
have a service of death and resurrection tomorrow, for a man who was 88 years
old at the time of his death. He loved life and loved his family. He had a
deep faith in the Lord. It will be a time of celebration of the life that we
have in Christ our Lord.
On
Sunday we will have a celebration of Baptism during morning worship. Praise the
Lord we have so much to celebrate. In the midst of chaos and confusion we have
a Savior and Lord who gives us victory again and again. Plan to be in the House
of the Lord this coming Sunday wherever you are, to worship the Newborn King and
the Risen Lord.
It was
in the summer of 1977 we attended a worship in a little hilltop chapel in the
State of Texas. The chapel, called "His Hill" was a like log cabin. There were
close 30 people in attendance at the worship. The preacher preached from
Lamentations 3. There are times in our lives when it seems like God is against
us. Although deep down we know that God is for us, there are times when it
seems like God is treating us more like an enemy than a friend. I think of the
end of Psalm 88 where there is a line where the writer says, "Darkness is my
closest friend." It is revealing and interesting that a great man of God,
Jeremiah, wrote book called "Lamentation".
Lamentations 3 is a very, very dark, almost
depressing, section of the book. The writer was pouring out his soul, telling
how he was frustrated and felt at wits end. He used a number of images to
describe how devastated he was and how he felt that God was against him.
He was
depressed. He was at the bottom with no hope, because it seemed that God had
become his enemy—that God was against him. What's interesting in this chapter is that
after twenty verses of sheer depression, there's a huge turn in verse 21. The
writer said, "Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope." In other
words, even in the dark hour of the human soul there was something he
remembered, though he had said in verse 18, "All that I hope from the Lord is
gone." He said he had no hope, but then, "Wait a minute. I remember something.
I recall something to my mind, and therefore I have hope."
"Because of the Lord's great love we are not
consumed, for his compassions never fail." Verse 23 says that the
Lord's compassions are new every morning.
The
writer used another picture in verse 24-25. He said, "I say to myself, 'The
Lord is my portion.' The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to
the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the
Lord." It's hard to know where to stop reading. The rest of this chapter flows
out of this section that says, "Even when God seems to be against you, he's
still loving; he's still compassionate; he's still faithful to you. He is still
your provider." That's why in verse 31 the writer said, "For men are not cast
off by the Lord forever." In other words, no matter what you're going through,
God's not going to let you go through that forever. Verse 32 says, "Though he
brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love." He uses
the same word that was translated great love. That's who God is. Verse
33: "For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of
men."
I want
to share a couple of sentences from a book written by Kathryn Greene-McCreight,
a college professor from Connecticut with a PhD from Yale. She's a leader in
her church, and many people come to her for counsel. She also struggles with
mental illness. In her early thirties, she was diagnosed with a bipolar
disorder. She wrote a book called Darkness Is My
Companion, using the last line of Psalm 88, and she argues that even
though we can't just read from the Bible and expect someone to feel better
immediately, it is ultimately the love of God that brings healing.
This is what she says: "If it is the love of God that we see in the face of
Christ Jesus that has promised to pull us through, a love that bears out to the
edge of doom even for the ugly and unlovable such as we, then the statement that
love heals depression is, in fact, the only light that exists in the dark
tunnel."
Lamentations was written over 500 years before
Jesus ever came, but the promises that Lamentations makes about God's love are
just as true today as they were then, and it's all because of what Jesus Christ
has done. We know the story: "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through him who loved us." "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor
angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height
nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8
In
Christ,
Brown
