When You Have Lost Hope

Video Transcript:

The fulfillment of God’s ultimate purpose is very wonderful, and every Christian needs to know it. But it may seem a long way from the painful realities that a grieving person is facing now. Heaven may be wonderful for the person who has died, but it may seem very distant from the one who grieves their loss, especially if that loss was sudden and unexpected.

The immediate question for the one who grieves is, “How am I going to get through today?” The New Jerusalem is not the answer to that question. Look again at what the grieving person in Lamentations is dealing with—“My soul is bereft of peace!” (3:17). “I have forgotten what happiness is!” (3:17).

He says, “My endurance has perished” (3:18). In other words, “I am just so tired. I don’t have any energy. Everything seems like an enormous effort to me. I have lost interest in doing things. I don’t have the heart for it anymore.”

Then he says, “My hope from the Lord [has perished]” (3:18). He is saying, “I don’t feel the presence of God with me. I don’t feel that I can pray. The hope I once had and the comfort I once found in God seems to have deserted me.”

“My soul continually remembers [my affliction]” (3:20). Anyone who has experienced trauma or suffered violence knows what this is like. Your memory replays the horror of what happened again and again. You can’t get it out of your mind. It comes back to you when you are in the car, in the shower, and most of all, when you are in bed at night.

God’s mercies are new every morning. Your Redeemer is faithful. He is true.
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“My soul continually remembers it!” (3:20). Christopher Wright gives the sense of this verse: “I vividly, frequently, painfully, wretchedly, continually remember until my soul sinks down into misery and depression.”[1] That’s where these people were.

Then we have these extraordinary words: “But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope” (3:21). What in the world could a person call to mind—when their soul has no peace, when they have forgotten what happiness is, when their endurance has perished, and their hope is gone—that would make it possible to say, “This I call to mind and therefore I have hope”?

Here it is: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).

One member of our grief group said that the early days of her grief after her son was killed in a terrible accident were like being in a pit. She felt that she was sinking. She could feel herself going down. How could she get out?

She said, “I learned to thank God for the smallest things. I thanked him that the sky was blue and that the sun was shining. If I heard a bird sing, I would say, ‘Thank you, Lord.’ Every time I thanked God for something, it was as if I was taking another tiny step toward climbing out of the pit.”

The focus of hope for the person in the depth of sorrow, trying to put life together in the ruins and rubble of loss, is not the hope of God’s ultimate purpose, wonderful and glorious though that is.

The focus of that hope is God’s immediate presence. God’s mercies are new every morning. Your Redeemer is faithful. He is true. He is with you. He is for you and he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5).

[Christopher Wright, The Message of Lamentations, p. 110, IVP Academic, 2015.]
[This sermon clip is taken from Pastor Colin’s sermon, “ Hope and Healing ,” found in the series, For All Who Grieve: Light and Hope in Lamentations]

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