Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Lamentations chapter 1 verse 1:
“How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal.”
Yesterday I walked through a wing of our Church which has sat unused since March. The silence of the space on Sunday morning was eery and sad and I wondered if the sadness was in me or the building itself.
After, I went into the sanctuary for worship where there was thankfully more life, but still very few people. The sanctuary was made to hold 1,300 people; there were less than ten present for our online worship recording. When the two singers joined with the organ for the hymn the sanctuary itself seemed to come to life. It is an instrument built to be played, but how lonely it sits day by day all by itself.
This morning’s Lesson is from Lamentations. It is a call to lament — to sorrow and recognition. It is a call to honor what was lost. The city sat desolate. It’s broken walls desolate. The nation, once so storied and prideful, was now like all the others — a puppet for some other people and their dictator.
Lamentation comes when there are no answers, when there is not yet the assurance of a path forward. It comes when the City sits silent, and mournfully so.
“Do not try to build back the City today,” Lamentation seems to say. Acknowledge what was lost first. Honor it. Sit in the City, and let its silence speak. Let the empty buildings speak.
For they have much to teach us about our own emptiness. They have much to teach us about our own sorrow.
And the term we have for all of this acknowledging of what has been lost and is void is what we call: Good Grief.
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. Tomorrow’s Lesson comes from Ezekiel chapters 1-8.
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