I have been re-reading one of my favourite books, Eugene Peterson’s “Five Smooth Stones For Pastoral Work”, and looking again at the book of Lamentations, a book written during a period of enormous suffering following the siege of Jerusalem and subsequent exile of God’s people to Babylon.
Suffering is an inevitable consequence of the Fall and cannot be avoided by any of us. When we suffer, we are overwhelmed by emotion and feel unable to make sense of anything. Peterson explores the acrostic form of Lamentations, remarking that its ‘A to Z’ approach helps us to examine suffering in detailed thoroughness but within the reminder that there is an end, a limit, to it. “The subjective feeling of endlessness in suffering is, in fact, false,” he says (P122). This tethers us to reality, something we desperately need when suffering explodes into our lives and ‘pain is scattered like shrapnel.’ (P 126)
As I ponder the subject of ‘the miraculous and the mundane‘ these days, I was struck by one of the comments Peterson makes: ‘God’s acts of mercy… permeate the ordinary days of the people of God.’ (P 127) Take time to soak that in.
When we are suffering and in pain, it’s hard to see God’s acts of mercy. All we see and feel is the pain (think of the all-encompassing agony of toothache or nausea…) But God’s acts of mercy are there – initially in the innocent hug of a child, in the friend who phones or drops in with shopping, in the sunshine which lifts your spirit, in the rainbow which reminds you of God’s faithfulness, in the unconditional love of the dog who sits at your feet… and then also in ways that we term ‘deliverance’ or ‘help’. Lamentations 3:22-23 shines in the middle of the darkness of suffering, tethering us to God’s love, mercy, compassion and faithfulness. Peterson writes, ‘evil is not inexhaustible. It is not infinite. It is not worthy of a lifetime of attention.’ (P124) But God’s love and mercy are.
