His Love Never Fails

Listen to this verse in Lamentations:

“He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out. He has made my chain heavy. Even when I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayer. He has blocked my ways with hewn stone. He has made my paths crooked.”

Life seems like that sometimes, right? Like we’re stuck, we can’t get out. Like God is far away and doesn’t hear out prayers. As if He’s blocked every way we’ve tried to go, and every path we walk is difficult and crooked.

Well how about this one?

“He has been to me a bear lying in wait, like a lion in ambush. He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces. He has made me desolate. He has bent His bow and set me up as a target for the arrow.” Lam. 3:7-12

Does that ring a bell? Do you ever feel like you’re a target for God’s arrows? Like He’s a lion waiting in ambush? That He has torn you in pieces and made you desolate?

Oh yes I have. Exactly that. I felt the arrows piece my heart. My life seemed desolate and my way was definitely crooked. Yet I must say, like the author of Lamentations, “Through the Lord’s mercies I was not consumed”.

I survived and I will survive again. Why?

“Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. “

His love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me. Every single sunrise His love for me is new. Like the dawning of the ages when the earth was fresh and clean, perfect beyond imagination, and God came to earth to walk and talk with the first man. The best of His creation. The one made in His likeness, made for the very purpose of having a close relationship with the Creator.

So how can this be? You ask. That He loves us so, yet He pounces and tears and leaves us alone, dying? He pierces us with arrows of sorrow and grief, yet He loves us that much?

“Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that woe and well-being proceed?” (Lam. 3:38)

Who am I to question the High King of Heaven? Why should I complain? I who am living because of His will. And I who deserves grave punishment for sins, yet whose black heart has been washed white as snow by my Savior’s blood. Who am I to say the Ruler of All can not do such a thing?

Yet I have hope! For the Lord does not cast off forever! Though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion, according to the multitude of His great undeserved love.

For He does not afflict nor grieve the children of men willingly. (from Lam. 3:31-33)

He may shoot arrows of sorrow or lay in wait with an ambush of trouble, or make our ways very difficult indeed, but He always has a purpose. And His purposes are for our good. Always. They may not appear so. We may walk in the valley of the shadow of death. We may climb the mountain of terrible trouble. We may stand on the slippery slope of pain. We may be in the dark pit of despair. We may be crushed with burdens too heavy to bear. Yet, Great is His faithfulness!

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” Lam. 3:24

He is enough. To trust and lean on Him is what I need to do.

“It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke of his youth. Let him sit alone and keep silent because God has laid it on him.” Lam. 3:26-27

My Deliver comes! He is working. His way is good even when it seem so bad.

His love never ends, it never gives up, never runs out on me! New, fresh, clean, every dawn, is His never ending love for me! I can say whatever He allows or puts into my life is good.

“The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him.” Lam. 3:25

Therefore I trust in Him, no matter what.