Questions And Answers (1)

How are we to bring good news to a world that is living with questions, a world that shows little inclination to believe the confession of faith - ‘Thou, O Lord, doest reign for ever’ - and little interest in praying the fervent prayer - ‘Restore us to thyself, O Lord’? This is a question which calls for a practical response. It demands a response which will take into account the questions which men and women are asking in this generation. To speak of questions - some spoken in the context of prayer and faith, and others asked with little expectation of an answer - is to acknowledge that there are many different types of questions. This may be brought out clearly through a brief review of the questions asked in the Book of Lamentations. In 1:12, we have a question put to those who despise the Lord’s people, ‘Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?’ In 2:12, there is the question asked by ‘infants and babes faint(ing) in the streets of the city’. (2:11) ‘Where is bread and wine?’ In 2:13, there are questions which raise the question of the comfort and restoration of a fallen people: ‘What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What can I liken to you that may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For vast as the sea is your ruin; who can restore you?’ The question of the cynics who ‘hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem’ is found in 2:15 - ‘Is this the city which was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?’. In 2:20, we have questions asked in the mood of prayerful moral indignation: ‘Look, O Lord, and see! With whom hast thou dealt thus? Should women eat their offspring, the children of their tender care? Should priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?’
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This is the ninth post in a series on Lamentations.