Lamentations
March 15, 2026
Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown
To ask questions of God is not a lack of faith, but an expression of trust.
Healing begins when hidden pain is brought from darkness into the light of God’s presence and the care of a trustworthy community.
Discovering hope in hardship by intentionally remembering who God truly is.
An essential part of healing involves honest reflection and a return to God.
Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? Why should the living complain when punished for their sins? Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven, and say: “We have sinned and rebelled and you have not forgiven. “You have covered yourself with anger and pursued us; you have slain without pity. You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through. You have made us scum and refuse among the nations.
— Lamentations 3:37-45
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. “‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord.
— Jeremiah 7:3-11
Repentance is part of lamenting: “We have confessed to being followers of Jesus without becoming truly shaped by the values he lived and died for. We have, in fact, applied our religion in ways that benefit ourselves but bring harm to millions.
— Soong Chan Rah
The sad truth about modern spirituality is that we often avoid feeling our own pain and in the process avoid feeling the pain of others. When this happens, it’s impossible to do the work of reconciliation…Lament requires us to take seriously the pain we see and feel and to open ourselves to how God might have us respond.
— Rich Villodas
I called on your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit. You heard my plea: “Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.” You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear.” You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.
— Lamentations 3:55-58