Here’s a little song I wrote, you might want to sing it note for note…
Don’t worry, be happy.
Imagine you are experiencing your worst nightmare, something that turns your world completely upside down. You call your best friend, your person, for support and they start singing that song to you. Would you be comforted or enraged?
I would hope I was using an “old fashioned” phone that I could slam into the cradle as I hang up on them.
Tradition says the prophet Jeremiah wrote the poems in Lamentations after the city of Jerusalem had been completely destroyed. Jerusalem was the capitol city of Israel, the land that was the physical embodiment of the promise God had made years and years before with Abraham that birthed the Hebrew people. Jerusalem was also the location of the Hebrew Temple where the Presence of God could be found. The destruction of Jerusalem was the Hebrew people’s worst nightmare. With the destruction of their capitol city, the ancient Hebrews wondered what that meant for the promise God had made to them. And the destruction of the Temple led to questions of where God went.
Listen to what Jeremiah recorded.
“All our enemies
have spoken out against us.
We are filled with fear,
for we are trapped, devastated, and ruined.”
Tears stream from my eyes
because of the destruction of my people!
My tears flow endlessly;
they will not stop
until the Lord looks down
from heaven and sees.
My heart is breaking
over the fate of all the women of Jerusalem.
My enemies, whom I have never harmed,
hunted me down like a bird.
They threw me into a pit
and dropped stones on me.
The water rose over my head,
and I cried out, “This is the end!”
Can you hear Jeremiah’s anguish? Can you feel his hopelessness? In the midst of this, Jeremiah calls out to God, and notice what God says to Jeremiah.
But I called on your name, Lord,
from deep within the pit.
You heard me when I cried, “Listen to my pleading!
Hear my cry for help!”
Yes, you came when I called;
you told me, “Do not fear.”
God doesn’t tell Jeremiah “Don’t worry, be happy”. He tells him “Do not fear“. God knows when our worst nightmare happens, when that medical test comes back with a bad result, when you get the call that changes your life forever, when that unexpected bill comes in and you don’t know how you are going to pay it…God knows the first feeling we get is fear.
In the Gospels we hear Jesus say this, too, “Do not fear”. A man named Jairus comes to Jesus because his little girl is sick. He asks Jesus to come heal her and Jesus begins walking with Jairus. On their way to Jairus’ house, some people come to say his daughter has died. And here is my very favorite part of the whole Bible. Jesus immediately turns to Jairus, and when I envision this story Jesus puts His hands on either side of Jairus’ face, looks in his eyes, and says “Do not fear, only believe.” Then Jesus continues walking with Jairus. Jesus stays walking with Jairus in Jairus’ worst nightmare so that Jairus can believe. Believe in Jesus’ love, in His goodness, in His faithfulness. I imagine the emotions Jairus felt on this walk were similar to what Jeremiah was feeling, tears flowing endlessly, his heart breaking. And Jesus just walks with him. Jesus stays with him in his anguish, his fear, his uncertainty so that Jairus can believe. God does the same with Jeremiah. The next line of Jeremiah’s poem says “Lord, you have come to my defense; you have redeemed my life.” It would be decades before Jerusalem would be rebuilt, and the nation of Israel would never be established in the same way it was before, so nothing has actually been fixed. Yet God is with Jeremiah and the Hebrew people in their sorrow, in their fear that this is the end, and through this Presence they can believe. This is how I feel God’s love through the poetry of Lamentations. This terrible thing has happened, forever changing an entire group of people, and God sits with them in their sorrow so that they can believe. God wants to do that for us, too. He doesn’t want us to hurry up and get over it and be happy. He wants to be with us in our turmoil, to hurt with us and mourn with us.
That is how we can show God’s love to others, too. As uncomfortable as it may be, we can just be with them in their suffering: when they get a cancer diagnosis, or have to plan a funeral too soon, or have to say good-bye to their home because finances fell apart, or have endless meetings for a heartbreaking divorce. We don’t need to remind them to “count it all joy” or that “God works all things for good”. While those are true, in the midst of heartbreak, those words sound as empty as “don’t worry, be happy”. A time will come for that, but until then, let’s just be willing to share each other’s grief. That grief is what makes us human.
I follow a rabbi on Twitter who shared this quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. “What is the image of a person? A person is a being whose anguish may reach the heart of God.” Your suffering is not unseen by God. He is walking with you through whatever nightmare you are going through, He is saying “Do not fear”, and He remains with you so that you can believe. I pray you feel that Presence and that others would join with you to be that Presence.
Amen
Additional Resources:
Link to listen to this as a presented it at church a couple weeks ago. The sermon our pastor preached is immediately after and is definitely worth a listen, too. Perfection, judging, flaws, love, all very much what this Enneagram 1 needed to hear.
Link to the Twitter thread I got the quote from. Read the whole thing. This rabbi writes about why bad things happen, about individualism in our American culture, the Jewish people praying in plural, all of it is absolute fire! Then follow her.
A Mind Renewing 