Exiled

"Nothing can make injustice just but mercy." -Robert Frost

"Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge."-William Shakespear

"If God is Love, He is by definition something more than mere kindness. And it appears from all the records that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense." - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.

A prayer for Mercy. 

The title above the large 5 perched to the side of the wispy sheet.  It is chapter 5 of Lamentations.  A book reeking devastation.   And the words quake right off the page.   

A lonely city weeping bitterly in the night.  Once blooming and prosperous, now desolate and bare.  

The Israelites exiled.

They became prisoners in a foreign land.  Slaves of a foreign people.  Ripped from their home.  Their country.  Their comforts.  

Their leaders and family slaughtered and scattered.  Starved and ravaged.  Mocked and scorned.  And shame rankled the hearts of these wayward souls.

“There is no one to deliver us” -Lamentations 5:8.  Their cries swell hallowed hurt…

…and there wasn’t.  There was no other country coming for them.  To fight for them…protect them… and take them back to their homeland.  There wasn’t anyone who cared for these souls… that they were desolate and deserted and enduring heinous atrocities.

The searing pain of their cries resonates real life stories I hear and live every day.  In this broken battered crumbling world.  And hot tears surge as I echo their calls…

 Mercy.                        Mercy.                        Mercy. 

I cry out for them too.  Knowing what it’s like to walk in the shame of my own rebellion. 

 

Wilting in a steaming mess made by “my own will be done” and constructing towers of Babel collapsing to rubble.

He’s taken me out into the wilderness away from comforts that soothe and secure.

And let me pass into raging waters of a ferocious sea.

He’s let the burning sands of desert lands expose my spirit drought.

And taken away earthly treasures precious to me.

I’ve felt lost…forgotten…alone and unloved.  Longing for rescue and relief.

I hear their bitter cries.  Pleading.  Hurting.  Faint of heart.

Who will save them?   For there is “no one to deliver us”.  

He had to let them know…Who could…for He loved them more than He loved their “happiness”…for it did not include Him…and in the end…their “happiness” was counterfeit.   Its dividends intoxicating right to the grave.  

“For the Lord will not reject forever,
For if He causes grief,
Then He will have compassion
According to His abundant lovingkindness”  –Lamentations 3:31-32

God Alone Saves.  He did then and He does now.  For He “is the same yesterday and today and forever” –Hebrews 13:8.   And I will sing it to the end of my days for it has been my song of Saving Grace.  Liberating my soul and opening my eyes to deep fountain joys…even in the darkest places.

September 28 marked one year.  What God has done in one year has been nothing short of glorious.  The healing from hardship and patience from endurance has been one big boot camp.  And bulldozing pride barriers to ripping up heart weeds has tilled new soil in deep places where He has brought the rain.  

“Restore us to You, O Lord, that we may be restored” -Lamentations 5:21.

And He doesn’t stop short of deliverance…He restores.  And I love here where it says He starts…”US to YOU”.  He restores us to Himself…that we may be restored.  This.  Is.  The Beginning…  To Real Life living…

May restoration and Grace thrive in our broken places.  May God deliver us from our bondage and rescue us from the rubble of our own wrecking ball.  May He walk with us in foreign wastelands where currents of life have carried us.  May we bow low before His light so we can see His work and beauty.  And may we run to Him after we fall so that shame does not blot out His tender mercies.   

And when you feel alone and hope is waning and the day's light is grey…cry out to the Deliverer…mercy….mercy…mercy….   He WILL come for you...and rescue you…right where you are.