The Personal Nature of Grief (Lam. 1-3)

I can’t understand yours. You can’t fully understand mine. The way each of us deals with grief and the cut of grief’s painful knife through the tender meat of our hearts is always different. The depth of the grief varies as well. The pain of some griefs seem to hover at surface level; some cuts heal quickly and leave no scar and other seemingly surface scratches can bruise and linger although no stitches were required. Some griefs cut all the way to the bone and never really fully heal however long we live. They lessen in their intensity over time but never abate, always calling out to be seen, to be acknowledged because of the deepness of the curt and the roughly healed scar (even when others can’t see that scar). Some of us seem more anesthetized to the pain than others, less vocal, less tearful, but the grief is not any less real for an outward show of grief’s intensity—we all deal and cope with our griefs in varying ways. However, the Who behind the grief makes all the difference in the world.

As I read through the Bible over and over again, I hunger ever more for its comfort, for the God who made me and knows me and sees me. I hunger for His wisdom in the midst of dealing with the griefs that seem to jump on me as I walk through this world. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, was no stranger to intense grief, and it is beyond my ability to understand his burden, just as I cannot fully understand yours. His grief was both personal and national, and his burden was greater than one man could bear, but he knew the One who helped him bear it even in the midst of intense suffering, and he cried out to Him often and loudly.

The Lamentations of Jeremiah follow the prophecies of The Book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament canon. They are raw pictures of grief that would normally remain personal, but in light of God’s call upon Jeremiah’s life, they are lived out very publicly. It almost physically pains to read Jeremiah’s writing, but it is full of truth—of the history and sin of Judah and Jerusalem, of God’s people, of human nature—and reeks of Jeremiah’s bitter misery as he suffers for the nation who has rejected its own God. In his first book called by his own name, Jeremiah has a call by God to bear a yoke His own people won’t accept, to mourn the sin they won’t mourn and falsely reject, and in warning, he gives voice to God’s wrath and disappointment as well as His unfailing compassion even in disciplining His children.

Lamentations begins with a third-person objective point of view that personifies the city of Zion/Jerusalem as a widowed princess turned forced laborer in exile. It is ugly. Even the roads to Zion are personified as mourning because no one travels them any more to come to her feasts. Everyone and everything mourns in its desolation—gates, priests, virgins, children, princes—and Jerusalem “remembers all her precious things that she had from the days of old” (Lam. 1:7a, AMP). 

Isn’t that the nature of grief? To remember over and over again the things that are now lost to us? Unfortunately, at a time when we most want to pull away from the world and be unseen in the midst of grief, alone like we feel, the world in which we live makes that impossible to do. People who ask in kindness how we are doing, who call to check on us, send us texts, come to visit, bring us food, hug us, post on our social media pages, tell us they are praying for us, they all just want to do what they can from kindness and even their own grief, but it is almost like poking the family of the grieving person with a sharp stick at times. Can we not just forget for a bit? No. We can’t. And the grief goes with us, tied to our persons, and we drag it along with us, slogging through those first days.

And that is the rub of this grief for Jerusalem. Even in exile, they cannot forget the sin that brought them to that place. They cannot escape it. They cannot unsee the things playing over and over again in their minds that they refused to see before. They hear the words of the prophets on rewind. They see their own sin, their faults, their failures. They cannot go back and relive their time in Jerusalem, their much-beloved city, and have it turn out differently than before. Their chances at doing anything differently are long gone.

And Jeremiah, this prophet who obediently provided the fodder for their mocking while still in Jerusalem, the one who spoke truth and grieved the sin of their nation when they refused to do so, he has been kidnapped and dragged off into captivity in Egypt. He expresses the groaning of the people he is with and the people scattered across Babylon. He screams out as Jerusalem personified: “See, O LORD, and consider how despised and repulsive I have become! (Lam. 1:11). His cry to God is not unheard. Even when it feels like it.

Then he immediately turns around (as Zion’s voice) and cries out to all around him watching her pain, and says, “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass this way? Look and see if there is any pain like my pain (1:12). Zion’s cry to others may have only been mocked, bringing desolation, hopelessness, misery, loss of hope, distress, and an overturned heart that allowed no rest as it looked back and saw rebellion left like a wake of destruction behind.

Isn’t that so much like our griefs? We want to remember the good, cling to the memories, but sometimes, especially when grief is raw, we only see the mistakes, the failures, the things that bring us more grief piled on top. We cannot change our circumstances any more than Jerusalem could prematurely leave its exile. What we can do is the same thing they could do. Turn toward God. Embrace His truth about the situation, repent of anything that needs to be repented of, confessing our sins to Him and finding life. 

Does the situation change externally? No. But internally, a battle has been won, and freedom from chains that weighed down may be found. It may come after much wailing at the wall of grief, rivers of tears that running out of broken hearts and down faces without relief or rest (2:18). “Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the LORD; lift up your hands to Him” (2:19) whatever your situation, whatever your grief, whatever kind of loss you are suffering. When you are faint, trust God with your grief, and let Him put to death the sins of your past. Jesus has borne that sin to the cross already. Confession and trust in Him heals the wounds of conviction that add to the burden of grief and loss. He is salvation (Jn. 3:16).

As Jeremiah urges in chapter three, writing as himself: “Remember, O Lord, my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and the gall [bitterness]. My soul continually remembers them, and is bowed down within me. BUT THIS I CALL TO MIND; therefore, I have hope. It is because of the LORD’s lovingkindnesses that we are not consumed, because His [tender] compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great and beyond measure is Your faithfulness. The LORD is my portion and my inheritance, says my soul; therefore, I have hope in Him and wait expectantly for Him” (2:19-23).

The situation hasn’t changed. 

Jeremiah has changed. 

He has looked to the only hope. The prophet who faithfully spoke to a hard nation who would not listen to his words (and suffered much for doing so) has to remind himself to look to the Lord in his grief. We are not different. We need reminding. We need hope. That hope is only found in the Lord. 

Look to Him. 

Live. 

Wait confidently even in your grief knowing that in His time he will save, has already saved. His compassion and mercy and lovingkindness is more than my ability to describe. 

Trust Him today with your grief that will hopefully only serve to draw you closer to Him instead of pushing you farther away.