God Locked Me Up in Deep Darkness

Scripture:  Lamentations 3:1-18  (The Message)

I'm the man who has seen trouble, 
trouble coming from the lash of God's anger.
He took me by the hand and walked me 
into pitch-black darkness.
Yes, he's given me the back of his hand 
over and over and over again. 

He turned me into a scarecrow 
of skin and bones, then broke the bones.
He hemmed me in, ganged up on me, 
poured on the trouble and hard times.
He locked me up in deep darkness, 
like a corpse nailed inside a coffin. 

He shuts me in so I'll never get out, 
manacles my hands, shackles my feet.
Even when I cry out and plead for help, 
he locks up my prayers and throws away the key.
He sets up blockades with quarried limestone. 
He's got me cornered. 

He's a prowling bear tracking me down, 
a lion in hiding ready to pounce.
He knocked me from the path and ripped me to pieces. 
When he finished, there was nothing left of me.
He took out his bow and arrows 
and used me for target practice. 

He shot me in the stomach 
with arrows from his quiver.
Everyone took me for a joke, 
made me the butt of their mocking ballads.
He forced rotten, stinking food down my throat, 
bloated me with vile drinks. 

He ground my face into the gravel. 
He pounded me into the mud.
I gave up on life altogether. 
I've forgotten what the good life is like.
I said to myself, "This is it. I'm finished. 
God is a lost cause." 

comment:  what a perfect description, of my last twenty-six years.

“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live. When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”  (John 14:15-21 TLB)

Prayer:  father god, we praise you for your tenacious love for us, that gets us through the various stages of faith, to your perfected goal.