The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. (Lam 3:22-23)We write songs with that thought. This is the stuff that feel-good posters are made of. It's a biblical hug from God. It's a wonderful reminder in stark times. It really is good stuff.
Now consider the context.
This is in the middle of the book of Lamentations. I don't think you need me to tell you the meaning of the title. It's a lament. Jeremiah is lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. That's a painful starting point.
The text itself is about a third of the way through the 3rd chapter. What leads up to it? Jeremiah begins, "I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of His wrath." (Lam 3:1) He goes on to describe his utter anguish. And he lays it on God. "He has made my flesh and my skin waste away." (Lam 3:4) "He has walled me about so that I cannot escape." (Lam 3:7) "He bent His bow and set me as a target for His arrow." (Lam 3:12) Decidedly not warm and friendly stuff. In preface to the passage we started with he writes,
He has filled me with bitterness; He has sated me with wormwood. He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, "My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the LORD." Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! (Lam 3:15-19)This is not hope and joy. This is deep anguish. He isn't only in torment; he feels his torment is from God. He hasn't just lost hope; he has last hope from the LORD.
When we get to the famous passage, he says, "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope." (Lam 3:21) In the midst of abject horror -- even from God -- in what does a man who has lost his hope from God find hope? In God. Not in God's "being nice" or "fixing things" or "doing what I ask." He finds it in the nature of God. God is love (1 John 4:8). He finds it in God's mercy. He finds it in God's faithfulness.
Jeremiah was a broken man, the "weeping prophet." His hope was not that his circumstances would improve. His hope was in his relationship with God. Knowing God was what he needed in order to find hope. Not hope for improved conditions or answered prayer. Hope in a God that appeared to have harmed him.
Most of us will never experience the level of grief that Jeremiah did. All of us, however, will experience some pain and grief, and all of us can experience that hope that passes understanding. We experience it by looking at our Lord and not the circumstances. We do it with an intimate knowledge of who God is and not what we're immediately experiencing. Everyone of us can answer as Jeremiah did.
The LORD is my portion, therefore I will hope in Him. The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. (Lam 3:24-26)The context doesn't change the meaning of the text here, but it certainly enlarges it.
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