Hope and Change

Friday 12/5/2014 4:01 AM

Today I read Lamentations 3. Many of the verses remind me of the last year, a time where God has seemed to be silent in my life. “(The Lord) has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead. … Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. …I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say, ‘My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord.’ I remember my affliction and my wandering, … I remember them well and my soul is downcast within me.”

After Jeremiah lamented his condition of being afflicted and abandoned by God he breaks out with a triumphant statement of hope for which Lamentations 3 is most well known, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” My response to that great hope should be the same as that of Jeremiah, “‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’ 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. …Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him.”

This week has been filled with social unrest. Last week a grand jury failed to indict a police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri. Earlier this week a grand jury failed to indict a New York police officer who choked an unarmed black man, despite the fact that the man repeatedly told the arresting officers that he could not breathe and a witness filmed the incident. There have been demonstrations and riots across the country calling for judicial reform, for a change in a system that upholds the status quo and fails to provide justice equally to all people.

In the middle of Lamentations 3, after this passage that describes the faithful love and compassion of God for people, come the words of verses 34–36, “To crush underfoot all prisoners in the land, to deny people their rights before the Most High, to deprive them of justice – would not the Lord see such things?” The thing that I find so troubling is that the Christian community should see the world in the same way that God sees the world. If segments of our society are being crushed, denied their rights, and deprived of justice, Christians should be leading the charge for reform and change. They should be in the vanguard of those seeking justice for the oppressed. Unfortunately it seems that many Christians are the ones fighting hard to maintain the unjust, unequal, and biased systems that prey upon the weak and disenfranchised.

My response needs to be the same as that for which Jeremiah is calling in verses 40–42. “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven, and say: ‘We have sinned and rebelled…’ Streams of tears flow from my eyes because my people are destroyed. My eyes will flow unceasingly, without relief, until the Lord looks down from heaven and sees. What I see brings grief to my soul because of all the women of my city.”

I believe that our society needs to change. We need to live up to the Pledge of Allegiance, which describes our nation as being under God, with liberty and justice for all. I’m not sure how I can personally affect the change that is required but I’m quite certain that if I examine my ways, seek after God, repent of the part I have played in the perpetuation of injustice, and align myself with those who are oppressed, the Spirit of God will direct my path.