I read this statement years ago and it has always stayed with me: “Never doubt in the darkness that which you believed in the light.”

How true and yet how difficult to remember the sun is still shining when the clouds roll in thick, grey and threatening.  But that is the very definition of faith isn’t it?  Believing and relying on what can’t be seen or touched.

When we are going through hell, life can be tough.  As much as we academically can quote a scripture, read or sing something uplifting, there is something in our inner being that is awaiting something else.  Some more powerful and true.  Something from God and something that only He can sort out for us.

So that even if our circumstances remain unchanged, we are lifted in our spirits to new heights of faith.

Recently, I was looking at the book of Lamentations, specifically chapter 3.

Jeremiah had been made some lofty promises from God despite his feelings of inadequacy (a constant theme in the scriptures by the way: “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”, Jer 1:6).  God tells him that he will rescue him from harm, that he would be “a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land” (1:18).

But things didn’t appear to go quite as planned.  It was taxing work telling them people their sins and come across as Mr. Doom.  No one wanted to hear that.  He was faced up by the king and his court, false prophets and thrown into a slime pit for days on end.  On top of this, the nation didn’t really take much heed on the whole.

All of this began to push the ‘Weeping Prophet’ into despair…  In Lamentations 3 he says things like:

I am the man who has seen affliction
by the rod of his wrath…

He has made my skin and my flesh grow old
and has broken my bones…

Even when I call out or cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer…

He drew his bow
and made me the target for his arrows…

So I say, “My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the LORD.”

He was disheartened, confused, angry, and at the verge of packing it all in.  But then something glorious happens.  The light goes on.  Not because of a change in circumstances, but because of something much deeper: genuine hope and faith in God worms it way through and blooms:

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:  because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him…”

He was cast down, but not destroyed.

A similar experience happened to young Asaph (Psalm 73) after he recounted his temptation to follow the way of the world and forsake God.  He writes:

When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. (v 21-22)

He realized his error, upon entering the sanctuary of God, and the lights go on:

Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (v. 25-26)

God is faithful and unchanging. Though we are tossed by circumstances, let the hope that He will do as He has promised be a sure anchor to the soul. The storms may rage, but our God is sure and steadfast. He has proved Himself over and over again. Great is thy faithfulness!