Just recently I was treating a client at the Crypt who is recovering well from addiction. As I was working on their injury they began to tell me that they had become a Christian a number of months previously – at a time when life seemed to be at its very worst. Listening to the circumstances around this journey, I could easily understand why they had reached this point of despair. But, they continued, they cried out for God to help them, and He did, and they attributed their recovery thus far totally to Him. They told me that now, every morning, they ask Him at the start of the day for His help to get through the day. They could see now – months later – so many ways in which He had helped them and turned their life around – it was impressive to hear all this and as I heard this story occurred to me that maybe I should tell them how closely their experience matched Jeremiah’s experience in the book of Lamentations.
I explained he was known as the weeping prophet because he was clearly in a bad place as he relates just how bad things were before they then got better as he reminded himself who God was.
Here it is paraphrased in The Messenger
I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness, the taste of ashes, the poison I’ve swallowed- I remember it all – oh, how well I remember – the feeling of hitting the bottom. But there’s one other thing I remember, and remembering, I keep a grip on hope: God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They’re created new every morning. How great your faithfulness! I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over). He’s all I’ve got left.
Engulfed by a sense of overwhelming, the turning point for Jeremiah came when he realised – he was down but not out because the one thing he still had the mercy and the faithful love of an unchanging God, and he could change his thinking and start to look for God’s help to change things for him – he chose to change his focus from the problems to wait quietly for God’s rescue from the circumstances.
The client was genuinely stunned that the bible should relate such a parallel journey to their own and exclaimed “Does it really say that!”
I copied the verses out for them and they left with less pain more movement and these verses in their pocket.
This interaction really blessed me, and also challenged me to choose to make this journey out of the gridlock of negative thoughts that it’s easy to feel engulfed by.
Just who blessed whom that day I’m not sure …
Lord please give us your comfort when times are tough, strength when the path is steep and faith to trust in your amazing love.