If you want to paint a picture of misery, Lamentations 5 would be a good place to start. It was awful. It says the women were being raped, the young men forced to carry heavy loads of wood, buying bread came at the risk of one’s life, the princes are hung up by their hands. It was just horror upon horror.

War is such a terrible thing. In fact last evening I watched the movie the Sum of All Fears as it was free online. But I didn’t like it. It was too close to reality. It was too close to what some people are suffering, even though there wasn’t a lot of that in the movie.

The lament goes on to cry out as to why God has forsaken them so long. Why God seems to forget. A cry is made for restoration unless God has utterly rejected them and is angry beyond measure.

This lament is both an acknowledgment of sin (v. 16) and a cry as to how much longer. Has God utterly forgotten them?

Gotta love the honesty here. And it is a heart’s cry echoed from every nation that has faced hardship. Why Lord? Where are you? Why is our suffering so prolonged?

Sometimes this suffering is from our own sin. Sometimes it is from the sin of others. Clearly this one is the one where Israel had the responsibility. God had warned them and they refused to listen.

It is a terrible thing to face judgment as a nation. Terrible. When one nations attacks another, terrible things happen.

It’s hard to read these kinds of things in Scripture because God has every right to bring judgment on so many nations of the world, including my own. He would be just when he judges. And I think he will unless we repent. Lord, have mercy.