Week 18: Day 3

Intro: Hello and welcome to Orbit, a short reflection to help you put God at the centre of your life from the team behind Satellites - I'm Jenny Flannagan, I manage Alumina, Youthscape’s online support program for teenagers struggling with self-harm. Each weekday we share a little bit of the Bible with you, give you a chance to pray and think about it, and provide you with one practical way to put it into practice today. This week we’re marking National Mental Health Awareness Week with some reflections that focus on this year’s theme, which is loneliness.

Bible: Today's reading comes from Lamentations 3:19-23.

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Thoughts: If you’ve been with us for the last couple of days you might be thinking – at last, something hopeful! And we have finally arrived at the parts of Lamentations that speak of hope. These get quoted a lot more often than the passages about despair and suffering. But they often get quoted alone – ‘because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning, great in your faithfulness.’ I love them.

But they mean something because of what has come before – and even because of what will come after. The writer says “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall, I well remember them and my soul is downcast within me.” It doesn’t mean so much to say that God’s compassion never fails if all we have known has been good and easy. It means much more to be able to say that when we have been in places where that has really been tested – where we have felt the absence of kindness, where we have been overcome with darkness, despair and sadness. And the way Lamentations is structured, these verses come in chapter 3 in the middle of the book, and chapters 4 and 5 return to the experience of suffering and pain. These verses are not presented as a way of saying ‘but it’s all ok in the end and everything has a happy ending.’ No, they are saying, in the midst of what is hard and what hurts, and with the likelihood that there will be more pain to come, we are not consumed because God is still there, and God’s kindness is not extinguished, God does not forget or get tired. God is still faithful.

I think this is a really powerful set of verses to hold onto, especially in Mental Health Awareness Week. Being in mental or emotional pain can feel overwhelming, scary and lonely. It’s hard to talk about, we often to don’t think we’ll be taken seriously, and even if we are, we don’t know that there will be a solution or a way to fix it. Our distress can come and go as well, in ways that are hard to predict. But I believe these verses give us something to hold onto – and really importantly they tell us that both things can be true.

They tell us the pain is real, the memory of it is still there, and there may be more to come. But what is also true is that God is kind, and faithful. And we can have hope because it’s not hope about specific things changing but hope in the presence of one who understands and sees and is kind and loving and faithful, and who isn’t going anywhere.

We don’t have to choose which one we feel. Both can be true.

Prayer: God, I want to hold on to the promise that you are compassionate, that you are present and that you’re not going anywhere. You do not dismiss my pain, but you are present alongside it. Thank you. Please keep holding on to me. Amen

Reflection: Let’s take a few moments to reflect.

Action: Every day on Orbit we give you a simple practical challenge to help you put this passage into action in your life. Here's today's:

Today we want you to make this personal. Write a prayer to God about what’s going on for you right now and how you’re feeling and balance every sentence with good and bad. Make sure you’re not putting BUT in the middle of your prayer – saying things are difficult BUT I still trust you. That makes it sound like you’re discounting the first half. Practice making that an AND. Things are difficult AND I trust you.

Outro: That's it for today's Orbit. Thanks so much for joining us - we'll be back with another reflection tomorrow.