Lamentations 1:18-19

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity. I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls." Lam 1:18-19

Now Zion is turning to a better mind. Here are signs of penitence. Zion acknowledges that her judgment is from the Lord, that the fire in her bones is kindled by the divine hand, and that her desolation and faintness are the judgments of the living God. When we see God in our punishments we begin to take a right view of them; when they are nothing to us but self-humiliations or signs of contempt, they embitter us and harden our hearts, but when we see God at work in the very desolation of our fortunes we are sure that he has a reason for thus scourging us, and that if we accept the penalty, and bow down before his majesty, we shall be lifted up by his mighty hand. Zion says that the Lord hath made her strength to fail, the Lord hath trodden under foot all her mighty men, the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress. But Zion does not accept these results with a hard heart; no: rather she says, "For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me." Whatever brings us to this softness of heart is a helper to the soul in all upward and divine directions. Zion confesses the righteousness of the Lord. In proportion as we can recognise the justice of our punishment, may we bear that punishment with some dignity. It has been pointed out that with this beginning of conversion the name of the Lord, or Jehovah, reappears. The people whom God has punished on account of their sins have, in the result, been enabled to recognise the justice of their punishment. Of this we have an example in the Book of Nehemiah ( Neh 9:33-34 ): "Howbeit thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly: neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept thy law, nor hearkened unto thy commandments and thy testimonies, wherewith thou didst testify against them." In the case of the Captivity, we see the extreme rigour of the law in the expression, "My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity... My priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls": the most honoured and the most beautiful have perished of hunger, as it were, in the open streets. How impartial and tremendous are the judgments of God! May not virgins be spared? May not his priests be exempted from the operation of the law of judgment? Will not an official robe protect a soul against the lightning of divine wrath? All history answers No; all experience testifies to the contrary, and thereby re-establishes and infinitely confirms our confidence in the living God. Zion complains that her lovers have deceived her. "We have a similar confession in the Book of Jeremiah ( Jer 30:14 ): "All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not; for I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the multitude of thine iniquity; because thy sins were increased." But Zion will from this time forth lift up her head, and the cloud of God's wrath shall pass away. Hear how pathetic is the music of penitence: "Behold, O Lord; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death. They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it." This is indeed human confession, not only in the depths of its pathos and the reality of its grief, but in its hardly suppressed desire that personal enemies should be made to suffer by the sword of Heaven. Zion desires that the law of retaliation should take place in the case of her enemy: "Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint." How can a man even in his prayers be greater than himself? We reveal ourselves in our most pious aspirations. How selfishness taints our petitions! How our desire to see vengeance upon our enemies contracts and enfeebles our best prayers! Lord, teach us how to pray! Grant thy Spirit unto us, that even in our prayers we may love our enemies, and desire blessings for them which despitefully intreat us. This would be the perfection of character; in this holy, Christlike desire we should become even as the Son of God himself. This attainment is beyond us for the time being; all we can do is to move in the direction of its realisation; we may but move imperceptibly, yet if there is any movement which even God can detect, it will be accounted to us for righteousness. In all respects strive to enter in at the strait gate! Not only is the gate which opens upon conversion strait and the road narrow, but the gate is strait and the road is narrow which lead unto the completion and perfection of human character,