July 10 2013

My Daily Meditation

Today’s Reading - Lamentations 2

My friends;

When a people turn from God, they can expect to suffer from their own iniquities.  While God is indeed merciful, He is also just and righteous. Turn from your ways and repent, seek God.  My brethren, pray for our people. Pray that He may stay His hand, and that we would not go down this road, as the Prophet has written in his laments. 

1 How hath the Lord darkened the daughter of Zion in his wrath! and hath cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his wrath!

2 The Lord hath destroyed all the habitations of Jacob, and not spared: he hath thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah: he hath cast them down to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof.

3 He hath cut off in his fierce wrath all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and there was kindled in Jacob like a flame of fire, which devoured round about.

4 He hath bent his bow like an enemy: his right hand was stretched up as an adversary, and slew all that was pleasant to the eye in the Tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his wrath like fire.

5 The Lord was as an enemy: he hath devoured Israel and consumed all his palaces: he hath destroyed his strongholds, and hath increased in the daughter of Judah lamentation and mourning.

6 For he hath destroyed his Tabernacle, as a garden he hath destroyed his Congregation: the Lord hath caused the feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his wrath, the King and the Priest.

7 The Lord hath forsaken his altar: he hath abhorred his Sanctuary: he hath given into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces: they have made a noise in the House of the Lord, as in the day of solemnity.

8 The Lord hath determined to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he stretched out a line: he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart, and the wall to lament: they were destroyed together.

9 Her gates are sunk to the ground: he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her King and her Princes are among the Gentiles: the Law is no more, neither can her Prophets receive any vision from the Lord.

10 The Elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads: they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.

11 Mine eyes do fail with tears: my bowels swell: my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the children and sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.

12 They have said to their mothers, Where is bread and drink? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, and when they gave up the ghost in their mother’s bosom.

13 What thing shall I take to witness for thee? What thing shall I compare to thee, O daughter Jerusalem? what shall I liken to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?

14 Thy Prophets have looked out vain and foolish things for thee, and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity, but have looked out for thee false prophecies, and causes of banishment.

15 All that pass by the way, clap their hands at thee: they hiss and wag their head upon the daughter Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call, The perfection of beauty, and the joy of the whole earth?

16 All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth, saying, Let us devour it: certainly this is the day that we looked for: we have found and seen it.

17 The Lord hath done that which he had purposed: he hath fulfilled his word that he had determined of old time: he hath thrown down, and not spared: he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, and set up the horn of thine adversaries.

18 Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter Zion, let tears run down like a river, day and night: take thee no rest, neither let the apple of thine eye cease.

19 Arise, cry in the night: in the beginning of the watches, pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thine hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the corners of all the streets.

20 Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom thou hast done thus: shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the Priest and the Prophet be slain in the Sanctuary of the Lord?

21 The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: thou hast slain them in the day of thy wrath: thou hast killed, and not spared.

22 Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the Lord’s wrath none escaped nor remained: those that I have nourished and brought up, hath mine enemy consumed.