Verse of the Day for March 27

Lamentations is a funeral song for a destroyed city. The middle of chapter three is the only place the writer allows himself any hope, and even there the advice is severe.

He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him.

There is no attempt here to make the situation better. The verses around it talk about putting the mouth in the dust, and giving the cheek to the one who strikes.

What is being described is a posture for grief that has no answer yet: sit down, stop explaining, and carry it without narrating it to everybody.

That is not the same as bottling it. The book itself is five chapters of the loudest possible complaint, so the writer is plainly not against speech.

But he distinguishes between lament, which is addressed to God, and the endless commentary we produce for ourselves and anyone nearby. One is prayer. The other is noise, and it prolongs the thing it is trying to process.

There is a silence that is denial and a silence that is endurance, and they look identical from outside.

The difference is whether you have already said the true thing to God.