Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations sitting in the ashes of a burned-down city. He had watched everything fall. And right in the middle of that grief, he does something on purpose that I want you to learn to do:
“This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:21–23, KJV)
Hope begins when you remember the right thing
“This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.” Do you see it, child of God? Hope did not come from his circumstances changing: nothing had changed. Hope came from where he chose to point his mind. He turned it off his affliction and onto God’s character. It is the same choice the psalmist made: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?… therefore will I remember thee” (Psalm 42:5–6).
Three anchors: mercy, compassion, faithfulness
And look at the three anchors he grabs. Mercy: “we are not consumed”; we are still here only because God is loyal to His word: “I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6). Compassion that never fails: “can a woman forget her sucking child?… yet will I not forget thee” (Isaiah 49:15). Faithfulness fresh every dawn: “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5), like manna you gather new each day.
And when everything is gone, He is still your portion
So the grieving man ends up saying the bravest thing in the book: “The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him” (Lamentations 3:24). Stripped of everything he owned, he still had God, and God was enough. The same mercy that spared Jerusalem saves sinners now: “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us” (Titus 3:5). So when your night is long, interrupt the spiral, and say it out loud: great is His faithfulness. Glory to God.
Related Teaching
“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
2 Corinthians 5:18-21 (KJV)
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