A Time to Share
A reason for our hope
How do we know when it’s time to share our thoughts or our writings? When someone outside of us invites us or asks us to, it’s a good indication.
On a monthly basis, our church has what is called “share week.” Pastor Anthony invites a few regular members to come forward before the sermon and share something they learned while getting into God’s word.
Sometimes he asks specific people, and sometimes he gives an open invitation. I’m responding to the open invitation, but here in writing. Going forward, this publication will be inspired by what I might say if I were to get up and share at my church, or if someone were to ask me a reason for my hope.
"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear" (1 Pet. 3:15).
Daily bread
I was reading in the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. Something in the ending of Jeremiah dissatisfied me. In the final chapter, no cross references were given in my study Bible to point the reader to the New Testament. Yet the book ends with a story of hope. Something seemed to be missing from the notes.
The last four verses tell us about Evil-merodach, the king of Babylon, and how, in the first year of his reign, he “lifts up the head of Jehoiachin,” the king of Judah, who sits in prison after 30 years in captivity (52:31).
Evil-merodach—whose name, appropriately for Israel, means “foolish is thy rebellion”—brings Jehoiachin out of prison. The evil king speaks kindly to him and sets Jehoiachin’s throne above the thrones of the other kings of Babylon.
The last verses (33–34) tell us the king gives Jehoiachin new clothes. And he also gives him “bread before him all the days of his life,” … “every day a portion,” a “continual diet … until the day of his death.”
I see hope in this ending of Jeremiah. I see the Lord’s grace and provision for his people. I see daily bread. How could there be no references pointing to the New Testament, I wondered?
No Bible provides every possible reference, nor can it, but I wanted acknowledgment of what I was seeing in God’s word. If I could see our Lord and Savior in the story, why didn’t the notes point to Him?
Drawn to Him
Sometimes the Lord wants us to go seeking for Him. Through our longing for Him, He draws us to Himself. John 6:44 says being drawn by the Father is the only way we can come to Him. I think that’s exactly what’s happening at the end of the book of Jeremiah.
When we see that the prophet’s writings continue in the following book, the book of Lamentations, the unsatisfying ending of Jeremiah makes more sense and becomes more hopeful.
Lamentations could be called the book of “deep dissatisfactions.” The word “lamentations” means “to mourn aloud,” or “to weep and wail.”
The ending of Jeremiah therefore leads us directly into the prophet’s next book and to his lamentations, to his “sorrow unlike any sorrow” (Lam. 1:12). The book reveals the Lord’s sorrows over His people, who were taken captive when Jerusalem was cast down in punishment for its sins.
Toward the end of Jeremiah (51:63), it says:
And it shall be, when thou has made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it in the midst of the Euphrates.
So final! So seemingly hopeless!
Jehoiachin himself may have felt as if he were thrown into the depths of the sea when he spent 30 years in prison.
I think of where else we see the number 30. Jesus, our great High Priest, was 30 years old when He began His ministry on earth. Numbers 4:3 tells us this is the age when priests became qualified to serve.
Seeking hope
Many at ECBC have heard my testimony. I was saved during the summer of 2020, at the height of the lockdowns. At that time, Scott and I were separated. I lived alone in a studio apartment. And my employer had sent everyone to work from home.
My single-room apartment became a prison. I could no longer go into the office and work among the people whom I thought were “my people”—editors and writers. I felt trapped in solitary confinement, chained to my laptop, and only able to communicate through cameras and microphones. I could see no way to free myself.
My sorrow at that time felt “unlike any other sorrow” that I had known up to that point. I had to admit that I was not in control of my life and that someone else was. After many years of going my own way, I came up empty of myself, and I turned to the Lord.
Crying out to God
In Lamentations 1, Jeremiah calls Jerusalem “the city that sits solitary.” He says the city “weeps alone in the night, “that “she has no one to comfort her,” and that all of her friends had left or betrayed her.
“Oh Jerusalem!” the Bible says in Matthew and Luke, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”
In my own time of emptiness, I thought God was pointing to my empty apartment. But I ultimately learned that he was pointing to the desolate house of my marriage.
In Lamentations 2:19, Jeremiah calls Jerusalem to “arise, cry out in the night:… pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift thy hands to the Lord for … life.”
When I finally lost hope in myself, only then did I turn my face to the Lord. I became ready to know Him, and I said, “God, what have you got?”
His mercies
I started reading the Bible, and within three weeks, I got saved. The Lord answered me. Through His word, he taught me about the gift of His Son, about who Jesus was, and what He had done for me.
What could I do but fall on my knees in surrender, just as Jesus surrendered to the cross?
The book of Lamentations, like the book of Jeremiah, ends with a bleak message. Its final verse says, “But thou [O Lord] hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.”
Even so, Lamentations also gives us hope. We find it in the middle of the book. Verses 22–25 in chapter three say:
It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
When you are in the midst of your sorrows, remember to seek the Lord, and he will answer you.