Words of Hope Daily Devotional

Jeremiah: A Man in Darkness

Read: Lamentations 3:1-18

Surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. (v. 3)

Jeremiah was the man who had seen affliction. He was called to be a prophet to a people who wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t repent. God sent him to the kings of Judah, warning them that he would bring the Babylonians to completely destroy them if they continued to worship false idols. Because of their sins, Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians around 587 BC, and Jeremiah was there to see the siege, the slaughter, and all of the devastation. His pain at the loss of his home and his countrymen can be felt throughout the book of Lamentations.

There’s a raw emotion in the words of Lamentations 3. Jeremiah feels like a man in darkness, walled in and imprisoned by God himself, so that he “cannot escape” (v. 7). He writes as though God were personally attacking him, like “a bear” or “a lion” (v. 10). God has torn him into pieces: He has Jeremiah as his target. The Lord doesn’t hear Jeremiah’s prayers, and the prophet says he has no hope in God. He has “forgotten what happiness is” (v. 17).

As we read these words, it sounds as if God were Jeremiah’s enemy! Have you ever felt this way in your own grief? Jeremiah’s honest description of his broken heart should encourage us to be honest as well when we grieve. Does Jeremiah stay in this place of despair? Tomorrow we will see how Jeremiah moves past this pain.

As you pray, be honest before God about your own emotions today.

Laura Sweet

Laura N. Sweet is a wife, mother, grandmother, and former Christian school teacher from Midland, Michigan. She writes devotional material for both adults and children, and her work has appeared in more than a dozen publications.