Lamentations 3:55-56

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry." Lamentations 3:55 , Lamentations 3:56 .

This is a testimony which cannot be set aside by mere criticism, but is personal and direct, and is endorsed not for official purposes, but with the extremest and happiest consciousness of which the soul is susceptible. There are great hours in life which men cannot forget. Answers have come to us that have written themselves upon the very tablets of the heart, and we cannot consent to have them erased merely to endorse or sanction some frivolous or speculative theory of life. Testimonies of this kind acquire still greater force and value from the fact that the witnesses are not ashamed to testify that many prayers have remained unanswered, and many cries have awakened nothing but mocking echoes. For example, this very prophet has already said, "Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked." Never do the Biblical saints hesitate to acknowledge that their prayers have remained without answers. Thus Job: "I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not." And thus the Psalmist: "O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent." Whilst, therefore, we speak about unanswered prayer, as if there could be no doubt concerning the reality of the witnesses, we are bound by our own reasoning to accept those witnesses when they testify that they have cried unto the living God, and have received direct and sufficient replies. In this chapter Jeremiah is full of gratitude because of his communion with God; he says: "Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life." What variety of experience we have in all these chapters! Sometimes the prophet is on the mountain, and he waves the banner of victory; and sometimes he is down in the valley, putting on a shroud as a garment, and making ready to lie down with those that are slain. This image of God drawing nigh has been taken up by the Apostle James "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you." This image of pleading is familiar in the Old Testament: "Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me"; "Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will plead thy cause." We must not take the light as expressing the sum-total of religious experience; nor must we regard the darkness as the only aspect of the divine government of men: we must think of the night and of the morning, of the winter and of the summer: in other words, we must not judge God by special aspects or particular incidents, we must take in great breadths of time, large areas of observation and experience, and ground our inferences upon them. So judged, Christianity has nothing to fear from the most bitter and persistent of its enemies. The older men become, the richer should be their store of Christian evidence: there is a learning of experience as well as of letters; there is a genius of spiritual enjoyment as well as of intellectual penetration: here the simplest may assist: the greatest, and the men who have seen the most of affliction can throw light upon many problems which puzzle the most intellectual minds. Letters can belong but to a few. Genius is the badge of individualism. The common experience of mankind is the fund on which we must draw both for argument and illustration in many attempts to elucidate the divine government of man.