“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope; Because of the LORD’S great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:19-23

In the previous post we found a lesser known meaning for the word downcast: “A shaft dug in a mine for extra ventilation”. We explored how this noun, downcast, can be likened to a trial; and how God can use these trials in order to breathe new life into our hearts: similar to how a miner relies on the downcast for air to breathe. So now that we know a little bit about the ability an affliction has to affect our lives in a positive impact lets discuss the hope that we have which makes this all possible: God’s great love.

“Yet I call this to mind” The author of Lamentations is telling us that this is something we can actually do ourselves. We can set our mind to something by conjuring up a thought. We also find this setting of our minds in Colossians 3:2 “Set your minds on things above…”. In Colossians it is more of a command rather than an ability as we see it in the verse from Lamentations. There are several other examples in scripture of setting our minds either for or against God, but for the sake of time I will stop with these two. So we find here that our minds are not merely floating in space wandering from thought to thought, rather that they can be set by us: our minds can be made up if we so choose.We have a choice about what we think.

He goes on to say: “…therefore I have hope”. Here we see that because of what the author has chosen to set his mind to he has hope. He has hope because he remembers the LORD’S great love. His hope is not found in his own ability or circumstances. It is not found in his friendships, family, or place of employment. His hope is found in the unrelenting, undeserved, undeniable, love of God.*

This is something written by a man who had absolutely made up his mind about God and who set his mind on things above. This is a man who intimately knew his Creator. This man was in utter anguish and who’s soul was crushed and yet his hope was never gone because his hope was found in Jesus. In Yahweh. In the Lord of lords. He knew that nothing was too big for God. He knew that although he may have been in some dark places facing some really heavy things, nothing would be so great it would have the power to consume him because of God’s love for him. God’s love is our hope. He is our anchor in the storm. His love will never fail.

*(I say he because it is thought that Jeremiah is the author of Lamentations, so for the sake of this post let’s just assume the theologians are correct and assign the author’s gender with this in mind.).