Some days are just dark. Dark, gloomy, dreary, desperate, desolate, doomed ... some days are lonely. Some days, God just seems absent from our lives. How else can the darkness be explained? A few days ago, a good friend of mine lost his brother to a sudden heart attack. I know that was a very dark day for him. I know he felt very alone.
But God’s power and grace are at work in our lives, even on those most desperate days. The passage from Jeremiah describes a time of great destruction and disaster. It is a prophecy, so it is written as a vision of horrible events coming in the future. The prophet is apparently describing the ruin of Jerusalem and the desolation of Judea by the Chaldeans. “Disaster overtakes disaster,” “the whole land is laid waste,” the earth was “waste and void,” the mountains were “quaking,” “all the birds of the air had fled,” the “cities were laid in ruins.”
If you’ve lost a loved one, or a job, or life is heavy and dark, you know this despair. And yet, in these darkest times, God reveals himself. Near the end of the prophecy, when all the coming destruction and devastation has been described, God delivers the ultimate glimmer of hope. He says “the whole land shall be in desolation; yet I will not make a full end.” I will not allow complete hopelessness, he says. Just when our lives seem to slip into the deepest depths, God offers the light of his salvation. Do not be afraid …
—Jim Blundell
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