Errors: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

Reading: Lamentations 5:1-5: ... "Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, Our houses to aliens... We are worn out, there is no rest to us."

Errors

Even then Your people asked You to remember what had "befallen us" and we too often forget that the answer to us is also due to our own sins, or ignorance, or disinterest to care--until we are personally affected. Revealed that we have forgotten to follow Your words.

In our despair, our weakness, our fatigue, may we remember Lord that we need to recognize the whole truth: our errors, our excuses, and Your warnings that we ignored.

Please open our hearts again to seek Your forgiveness and show us again how to live for You despite our losses, our weaknesses, and our weariness. So that whatever circumstances we face our heart and soul will be centered on You and Your way.

Your thoughts,

Completed: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

                 Completed

                Pursuit ended

                stricken by swift

                captured on nets

                shadow covers

                

                quiet emptiness

                punishment completed.

Psalm 37:35: "I have seen the wicked oppressing, and towering like a cedar of Lebanon."

Reflection: Exam: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

 Reflection Questions

        1. What hope does the knowledge that sin will be punished--regardless of heritage--give you?

        2. Have you been betrayed by those you trusted, or failed by any who had promised to help?

        3. Are you willing to have your own hidden sins exposed to you by the Lord?

Share: How might that change your relationship with Him--with yourself?

Exam: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

Reading: Lamentations 4: 19-22: ... "The punishment of your iniquity has been completed, O daughter of Zion; He will exile you no longer. But He will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins!"

Exam

We are each responsible for our own actions. How we treat others--how we act in kindness and forgiveness--or in hatred and revenge.

Before we accuse others we need to be honest within ourselves.

We ask Lord, for Your forgiveness when our immediate reactions are to complain, to make inner and outer assumptions, to blame others but not ourselves.

May we learn to seek You first and ask for Your strength to see what is the truth and obey the consequences in trust."

Your thoughts,

Cause: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

                Cause

                Power, riches, influence

                lured them away

                prophets, priests chose

                license over commitment.

                Silenced the truth

                with platitudes

                sugarcoated consequences

                watered down principles.

                Righteous died

                their sin the cause

                responsible actions

                turned to soul sacrifice

                now scattered

                blind wanderers

                no honor to defiled

                blood-stained deeds.

Psalm 37:34: "Wait for the Lord, and keep to His way, and He will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on the destruction of the wicked."

Reflection: Purpose: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

Reflection Questions 

        1. Have you ever stubbornly been deaf and blind to the Lord's counsel? Why?

        2. How did your decision affect others close to you?

        3. How empty did you become before returning to His grace?

Share: How do you confirm truth now when you are uncertain?

Purpose: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

Reading: Lamentations 4:13-18: "... They wandered, blind, in the streets; ... The presence of the Lord has scattered them; ... Yet our eyes failed; ... They hunted our steps So that we could not walk in our streets; Our end drew near, Our days were finished For our end had come."

Purpose

When we come to our ends our lives change whether for good or potential danger. It is hard to break away.

Yet the Lord knows all of our days past and future. We need to listen. So that we can follow the path He chooses next. Even if the next stage brings danger and heart sickness we are only safe in His guidance. In all new beginnings.

Lord, please show us how to pray to see the closed doors and then through Your grace and purpose give us courage to step out into the next open road.

Your thoughts, 

Disbelief: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

                 Disbelief

                Desperate people

                resort to terrible acts

                as life drains away

                sacrifice most beloved

                sons and daughters

                desperate to live.

                Disbelief astounds

                outsiders at calamity

                no one truly thought

                this city could fall

                protection assured

                disbelief now shudders.

Psalm 37:33: "The Lord will not abandon them to their power, or let them be condemned when they are brought to trial."

Reflection: Path: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

 Reflection Questions

        1. Have you ever hungered for something to the degree that you were willing to sacrifice anything in your desperation?

        2. When can our faith shift into assumptions regarding our external welfare?

        3. In what ways do we begin to depend on our 'good' circumstances instead of God's grace?

Share: Do you still cling to His grace in times of trial? What keeps you grounded through profound calamity?

Path: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

Reading: Lamentations 4:7-12: "Better are those slain with a sword Than those slain with hunger; For they pine away, being stricken...And He has kindled a fire in Zion Which has consumed its foundations. The kings of the earth did not believe, Nor did any of the inhabitants of the world. That the adversary and the enemy Could enter the gates of Jerusalem.

Path

We do not listen.

We do not hear Your warnings.

We blame others and exclude ourselves.

And then we turn our anger against You, Lord. And we step further away.

Yet You do not leave us.

You restore each one of us when we finally see the truth.

Forgive us, we pray, for all the complaints and charges we have accused others and not accepted the consequences of our own sins and failures.

Please show us how to stay on Your path of obedience on all our days. Keep our  hearts adn minds and souls centered on Your will only.

Your thoughts,

Shards: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

                 Shards

                Cruelty enters hearts

                children beg for bread

                ignored like shards

                on a potter's hearth.

                Sacred stones tarnished

                scattered everywhere

                once held in respect

                another refuse.

                Shadow city

                stumbles through days

                clinging to ash heaps

                dead inside.

Psalm 37:32: "The wicked watch for the righteous, and seek to kill them."

                

Reflection: Purity: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

Reflection Questions

        1. What shards of sin, from yourself or others, have tarnished God's truth for you--especially towards worship?

        2. How might we be able to identify the 'cracks' dissolving our faith before they sabotage our relationship with the Lord and with others? 

        3. What hopes have failed to thrive because of starvation/deprivation in your life?

Share: Do you believe the Lord can, or will, still use earthen vessels? Why? Or why not?

Purity: Lamentations: Prayers and Poetry

Reading: Lamentations 4:1-6: ... "The little ones ask for bread, But no one breaks it for them...For the iniquity of the daughter of my people Is greater than the sin of Sodom...".

Purity

These passages feel so true in our world  right now with each of us blind in our self-centeredness and our sins. Plus politics and bureaucracy and arguments raise the battleground.

Show us please how we can kneel in our hearts and souls and minds and thoughts. To bring them all before You to be seen in Your light. So we can walk away from the sins that cling. And discern the false decisions.

None of us can see paths properly on our own. Please guide each of us step by step on Your words. We pray to kneel and lift to You in our desires, in actions, and especially in compassion to others as You lead.

Your thoughts,