Oh, oh, oh . . . How empty the city, once teeming with people. A widow, this city, once in the front rank of nations, once queen of the ball, she’s now a drudge in the kitchen.  She cries herself to sleep each night, tears soaking her pillow. No one’s left among her lovers to sit and hold her hand. Her friends have all dumped her…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.

Lamentations 1:1-2; 3: (The Message)

Have you watched the news lately?  Just this morning I learned that the Nikkei Index (Japan’s stock market) just reached a 26 year low!  Economists are being reported as saying that we are now in a “global” recession.  In the same thirty minutes of news this morning, I watched footage of a new “tent city” rising up on the outskirts of…Sacramento, California, and of a pastor being shot to death in his pulpit this weekend!!!  What is going on in our nation and world?

Whatever the causes, whatever the outcomes, it seems as if we have lost all sense of direction and safety.  As I reflect on the events of each day and seek to hear God’s voice through the chaos, the words of Jeremiah in Lamentations resonate within my soul.  This eerie, but pure, heart cry of the prophet was penned during some of the darkest, most desperate times in biblical history.  Amidst all the anguish and uncertainty swirling around and within him, Jeremiah paints a verbal portrait of hope on a canvas of catastrophe.

This Easter we will begin a brief journey through Lamentations asking God for a renewed sense of direction, stability, and hope in the midst of a collapsing economy.  If the resurrection of Jesus has any application to our lives, it ought to be as the source of a living hope when all else seems lost.  So, here’s my challenge and plea for help.  What questions, concerns, and fears are most present in your life at this point?  What are the issues that the people around you are struggling with most?  Will you talk with the people you know and with whom you have contact and ask what concerns them most in our present national and world crisis?  Will you ask them how they hope to survive if we continue down this road to an economic depression?

Your comments will be extremely helpful as I attempt to share what God longs for us to hear and do in these desperate times.  Invite your friends and neighbors to join us for Easter as we consider the promise of God in the context of failing economies and hear of the only hope that can endure the storm.  Pray that we can connect with the people around us who genuinely feel “lost” in these times, and “shine like the stars in the universe as we hold out the word of life.”

Love you all,

tim