How many educate their children in the knowledge of the truth of God? the fear of God? They don’t stop to consider that by this failure they murder their children and cut off the hope of a church in the next generation. They don’t realise they are making Satan’s dreams come true and contributing to the demolition of Christianity. Some people amuse themselves by teaching their children ribald jokes and filthy entertainment and sayings, and so send them off as apprentices to Satan, when all their attention should be given to joining them to God.

What legacy are we building for our children? As one trouble after another crashes down on the Christian church, and with the fabric of society fraying at unthinkable rates, we want to call onlookers to see our distress and mourn with us. Yet more pressing than that, we want others to escape this sorrow and suffering. We want others to avoid making the same mistakes as we did, mistakes which in hindsight were inevitably going to bring moral and spiritual devastation in their wake. Indifference to basic truths about God and salvation, carelessness about morality, bad attitudes towards fellow-believers — surely anyone could have predicted that the church would only bring trouble on itself and end up hopelessly ineffectual as a force for good in society? David Dickson listens to Jeremiah as he mourns in the book of Lamentations. As we see in the following updated extract, our biggest concern should be to hand on intact to our children the best of what God has given us, so that they would never have to suffer the painful consequences we have experienced because of our lack of commitment to the Lord.

The Recognition of Justice

See how the church stops her mourning for the devastation she sees wherever she looks. It is by acknowledging that all that has come on her is deserved, and that God has acted justly. The best way to stop fretting and murmuring when we are stricken is to look to God’s righteousness and His judgments and our own part in bringing these righteous judgments on ourselves. This is the only bridle which holds us back from maligning God. It’s when a sinner doesn’t see sin and just deservings that he frets and thinks he is harshly treated, whereas if sin and a righteous God are seen, he would be quiet even if the judgment was heavy.

See too how the church wants others to be made wise by what has happened to her. She justifies God in the hearing of all the people where she was. “The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled against his commandment” (Lamentations 1:18).

Those who are penitent are willing that God would be restored to His honour, even if they smart for it and bear their shame.

They also want others to be made wise by what has stricken them. Indeed, they would be content for as many to know about their repentance as knew about their sin.

The Voice of Grief

“Hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow” (Lam. 1:18). It is as is if she said, “Come and see the heaviest sorrow that any man or woman ever had. Come and be witness of the saddest grief you ever saw, for my virgins and young men, the hope of my posterity, are cut off” (v.18). Her sorrow is such that whatever people or nation sees it, they would be affected by it, and in fact be astonished and wonder at it.

Those who are experiencing grief and sorrow for affliction think that others who hear and see it should feel it as deeply as they do themselves, or at least recognise the weight of the trouble they feel.

In this, we should take note of the opinion of the afflicted, for it one thing to see and hear grief, and another thing to feel it. Those who only hear trouble told rarely take it up, and they don’t take it to heart.

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