Lamentations 3: 22 – 33

  We are a culture, a generation that cannot wait. Everything has to be instant. “Haste” is the watchword of our time, and our constant rush actually robs us of time because we are sacrificing the present, are scarcely aware of it in its fullness, and hardly remember it. There is a panic to perform and produce that reduces our pleasure in the moment and which cannot revel and reflect in time that seems to go slow.  Someone has opined that they who hurry already have a foot in the grave. What is the basis of this unfortunate obsession with rapid momentum? In the world - greed and profit: in ourselves - gratification and the justification of our existence. All this impatience is not rewarding. It is oppressive and fatiguing, depriving us of health and happiness and firm relationships. Everything is fleeting and we are restless and dissatisfied.  The symptoms of our folly abound. They amount to misery and self-torture and the devastation is all around us to see. We have made gods of our gadgets and our technology is our version of the Tower of Babel.  Our self-wrought salvation is leading to chaos and confusion. We are shallow, superficial and substitute sentimentality for substance.

  Of course, some people profit greatly from cracking the whip in commerce and industry but as a result individuals, family, and community are cracking up. It’s a terrible disease that will, and does, prove fatal. We all have callings and consequent chores but it is the divine purpose that we should also be personally creative in accord with given talents and interests. Education, sadly, is principally the means for creating a work force but not for cultivating influences that civilize and foster our humanity. Satan and sin have ejected us from Paradise where work, wonder, worship, and wellbeing in fellowship with God, were to characterize our lives and enhance our experience of being. Now our basic drives are deviant, aberrant, and they are ultimately destructive. We were expelled from the Garden because in our fallenness we were about to sow weeds nurtured in our evil hearts.

  Waiting can be good for us. It can promote patience and profundity of thought and character. It is time to take stock, review desires and purposes, deepen yearnings, and appreciate where we are in our comprehension and evaluation of things. It is pause for thinking, looking around, and gazing on things that matter. It is opportunity for soul searching. More than that, it is time for seeking God in the midst of life’s pressing affairs. Too much speed is Satan’s exaggeration of our forging into the future without estimating the preciousness of the present. We are diverted from the inner life by external concerns and goals that in the light of eternity may not be all that worthwhile.

  Scripture speaks much of meditation and memory, and these are aspects of the mental and spiritual life that require “waste of time”. Friendship likewise. Communion with God also. Hurry hampers internal growth and maturation as human beings created for lingering fellowship with God and his people. Busyness is far too often Satan’s distraction from the important things of life. How often do we regret that we have not sheltered under the wings of the Lord more frequently and lastingly? We suffer leanness of soul while accolades, acquisitions, and debts accumulate. How often do wish that we knew our family and friends more intimately and had lavished more of our time and affection upon them? We race through life’s course when it might be wiser to canter, and we count on time ahead that we cannot be sure of. The grave opens up for us before our spirits learn how to flourish and tragically enough sometimes before we have taken account of eternity which makes life not even of a second’s duration on the divine scale of immortality. How many of our fellow human beings can look forward to their obituary with Gospel optimism – the record of a life in line with divine purpose?

  Lamentations may be a brooding expression of mourning but its sadness is not permanent.  Affliction is keenly felt but divine mercy is confidently awaited. Job-like desolation entertains eventual deliverance. Great misery in man does not cancel great love in God. “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, but his compassions never fail” even when we are nigh wasted away and our best hopes are failing. “They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” for days are freshly made when they come and refreshment of the soul may come also at any time of God’s choosing. The writer’s hope is still alive, not merely a dead notion, for he addresses God personally with an expectation that cannot finally be extinguished.

  “I say to myself, the Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him”, for his gift of himself can never be annulled, and his pledge of life never rescinded. Promises require patience from those who believe them – even against insuperable odds. The afflicted child of God first speaks to God from his anguish and then preaches to himself in his anguish. “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him.”  Our cry is never in vain even when it echoes back to us. Hoping and seeking are exercises in persevering solely based on God’s reliability and not the signs we long for. The soul may be severely stretched but not ultimately disappointed. “It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” in an attitude of retreat into the only safe refuge of the human heart. Closeness without comfort is no denial of blessing. Grace will germinate in good time however long its period of dormancy. “It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.”  Spiritual toughness is better sooner than later. Endurance is not easy for the young. We are to become accustomed to spiritual hardship as a way of life through God’s equipping. Trouble comes as a double blow to the unwary.

  It is incredibly hard to deal with adversity and the sense of divine desertion when they occur, especially when our early and “youthful” enjoyment of God has been sweet and our souls habitually buoyant.  We cannot credit that God lays these difficulties upon us and it is natural to complain. Ever we must remind ourselves that God is consistent though incomprehensible. If our sureness is shaken we must keep repeating to ourselves, “there may yet be hope”. It does not indicate that trust is tentative but recognizes that we have no claim to God’s goodness and that it comes as a consequence of God’s sovereign bestowal. It is an expression of humility, and acknowledgement that we are pleading for that which we do not deserve (cf. Jonah 3: 9).

  The resounding message of Scripture to those who seek God and wait long for him is plain to read and valid for all time and circumstances. “For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.”  There is no malice in God. He is not a monster that takes pleasure either in the crushing of his Son (Isaiah 53:10), or the bruising of his people. Our recalcitrant nature, like clay, requires softening and shaping. Beyond the necessary buffeting there is beauty of form as the new creation of God from raw and rough material.

RJS

  If Paul were a seminary dean or college principal students might be surprised at a portion of the curriculum he would prescribe for preparation for the ministry. No course of study is undertaken without a view to eventual success academically and then vocationally. Prospective ministers are not devoid of that hopeful expectation and in some ways it is nurtured and encouraged by the institutions that mould them and the tutors who instruct them. Their calling is a ground for confidence and the God they intend to serve will equip and bless them. Such an attitude may include an element of faith and a degree of selfish ambition. Everyone loves success: it is the idol of our culture. It is dangled before candidates for ministry by eminent practitioners of repute and commended by those with the necessary boldness to write the endless range of “How To” books, or present their experiences and paradigms as models for eager followers and admirers (it is remarkable that Lloyd Jones’ book on preaching is not a “how to” volume at all). While excellence that is pleasing to and provided by God is commendable the Lord’s notion of success may differ greatly from human assessments, even those whose thoughts are generally godly. God’s idea of “success” might be summed up as faithfulness and endurance in difficult circumstances.

 In many ways the nature of ministry is incorrectly depicted. A modicum of faith is amplified with a catena of formulae and a large dose of glib optimism to constitute a recipe for outstanding achievement. Legitimate exemplars in the service of God, and some dubious ones, are transformed into celebrities that trainees for pulpit and parish are exhorted to emulate for greatness and gratification. Idolatry can be an impulse for theological and pastoral pursuits. What a team an enthusiastic individual and God can be. Its straight ‘A’s all the way and triumphs until the end. We tend to praise and even flatter people when simple appreciation and genuine encouragement would suffice.

 Paul’s doesn’t glamourize the ministerial role or extol it as a good career choice for a sense of self-satisfaction. If his lectures were merely elective he probably wouldn’t have a crowded class-room. His topics would be unthinkable and unattractive to those setting out to conquer the world and astound the faithful. For the sake of self “big time” ministry and the cosseting attention of admirers is imperative. Paul fails to cultivate this approach completely. His words are sobering: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities” (2 Corinthians 12:10).The blows of God will break men down until they live for the sake of Christ. Immature belief deals with God as if he were a magician or genie there to make things permanently congenial for ourselves. John Calvin alerts us to God’s policy of downsizing his people.

*All who seek to elevate themselves, shall have God as their enemy, who will lay them low.

* Men ever swell with inward pride until God thoroughly cleanses them. . .This Satanic pride. . .is innate, and . . . cannot be shaken off by us, until the Lord regenerates us by his Spirit.

  Boastful Paul found himself abased by providential afflictions. First he discovers his weaknesses. Armed with distinctions and accomplishments he was a “natural” for divine service. Who wouldn’t have recruited him to the cause? But Paul finds himself riddled with disabilities physical, psychological, and spiritual. He learns the lesson described by Calvin: As far as any man is satisfied with himself, so he raises an impediment to the exercise of the grace of God. He erects a blockage to grace and is unable to convey it.  Instead of frustration and shame with his weaknesses Paul is content to know himself as he is and not to produce a false image. “Those who arrogate the least fraction of strength to themselves apart from God, only ruin themselves through their own pride”, comments Calvin. Paul was given a permanent reminder of his frailty through the thorn in his side, thrust there by God, and there to puncture his constitutional arrogance.  “Who is sufficient for these things” he admitted.

  The human spirit thirsts for compliments and appreciation but the servants of God must be ready to accept the insults of those offended by the gospel or moved by envy, ambition, or some residual rancour in the soul. Those who cannot share love, need cherishing, or feel undervalued can deal out hurt without warning. The love of Christ’s fellowship of people is an alien environment in which they function uncomfortably. Insults keep the servants of God grounded in the knowledge of their own unworthiness of honour. Hence Calvin opines: “It is an evil as it were innate in us, that we become elated and proud whenever God deals bountifully with us . . . . The best fruit of afflictions is, when thereby we are brought to purge our minds from all arrogance, and to bend them to meekness and modesty”.

  Are ministerial candidates really warned of the hardships ahead?  They plagued the lives of prophets, apostles, and “eminent” men and women of God throughout history. Analyse any famous biography and see if the lives recounted there could be envied in terms of the battles and disappointments they endured. Why should theology students anticipate a rosy future? a carnal kind of favouritism from God? Each person’s hardships will be unique and surprisingly unexpected and baffling. God is taking us out of ourselves and our cosy assumptions. Persecutions will assume different and sometimes undetected forms, and perhaps more within the faith community than beyond. Willie Still warns that often those most conspicuous for quoting Scripture and using the language of Zion can be the worst offenders.

  Calamities seem impossible to the novice in ministry. He believes he is well intentioned and will be well understood and well resourced due to the promises of God.  Ministries take an unexpected course. Paul found the rejection of his ministry by some personally calamitous as much as he found the dangers he encountered calamitous. Fears and failures will occur. We have our very fallible selves to deal with. Satan deals out his destructive opposition. God is dealing with us, and his providences are often mysterious. It is part of the ongoing teaching process: “The talents with which God has favoured us, are not excellencies originating from ourselves, but free gifts of God; of which, if any are proud, they betray their ingratitude” (Calvin). Readiness for divine service requires realism.

RJS