Lamentations 5:21 Turn thou as unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old
If you are anything like me, you probably skip ahead in stories that you are consuming to see if the end justifies the reading or the watching. Maybe you are reading a book and you skip ahead to the very last page to see if it has a happy ending, to see if it is good and worth reading. The book of Lamentations ends on a very sour note. Verse 22 says, “But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.” It is for this reason that when many of the Jewish people in days of old read Lamentations, they would read the last verse and then go back up to end on the previous verse because the previous verse says, as a prayer to God, “Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.”
Mourning, weeping, crying, and lamenting the past are only productive when they change your future. Lamentations is a funeral dirge. It is poetic lamenting; it is tears. Jeremiah is the weeping prophet. But that is only productive when such weeping changes our future. There is always hope for those who change course to match God. That is true for two reasons.
First, God’s power never fails. Our power fails, but God’s never does. There is always hope for those who change their course to match God. In verse 16 the rebellious people of God said, “The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!” They were no longer in control. They were living under the judgment of their sin. In contrast, verse 19 says, “Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.” No one is taking the crown from God’s head. Therefore, when we come to God and come clean with God, there is always hope because God’s power never fails.
Second, there is always hope for those who change course to match God because God’s chastening is not an end to itself. Lamentations 4:22 says of Israel, “The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished.” Then about another country it says, “He will visit thine iniquity,” meaning God will punish them. So which side of God are you on? Are you on the side where you have confessed your sin and things are clear between you and God? Have you put sin in the rearview mirror? Or, is judgment yet ahead?
Pessimism is not the only option for the world as we see it. The prophet says, “Renew our days as of old.” Tears are a result of rebellion not revival. We talk about repentance, mourning, tears, and angst. That may well be needed, but that is the result of sin, not the result of revival. It may be the thing between where we are now and where we need to be, but joy of Heaven is the result of revival.
Years ago, a young lady here at the Bill Rice Ranch was heard to say after making things right with God, “I feel so clean now.” Last night here at the Ranch we had a humdinger of a thunder storm. When we woke up this morning the clouds were beginning to part and the sun was beginning to emerge. It was almost as if the earth had had a good cry and the sun was out again. John Rice wrote a song entitled “Let the Sun Shine Again.” It is a song about how people can drift from God, but when they make things right with Him, the sun can shine again in their lives.
There is always hope for those who change course to match God because God’s power does not fail and God’s chastening is for the purpose of bringing us to the point we need to be and returning joy to our lives.