Depart Ye

"How lonely sits the city that was full of people."
So begins the book of Lamentations, one of the most raw and real in all of Holy Scripture. Here is no subtle posturing or empty emotional manipulation, but only the outpouring of a heart caught up with the holiness of God watching the destruction of His covenant people for their sin. At first glance the postmodern American may turn the page away from this chronicle because of its darkness, but beneath the troubled waters of the Weeping Prophet's tears there is a tremendous fountain of spiritual joy to be found. There is hope in exile, there is rescue for the desolate, there is rebuke for the false prophets, there is defeat for the enemies of Judah, there is restoration for the lost, there is healing for the afflicted, there is food for the hungry, there is vindication for the silenced, there is deliverance for the downtrodden, there is comfort for those who mourn, and for those who have departed from all they once loved there is a throne that will endure to all generations. Jeremiah faces head-on some of the most heartrending griefs we can ever know, and he does it in this great conviction: That the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; That His mercies never come to an end; That they are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
Depart Ye is a daily prayer devotional Monday through Friday for thirty-one weeks, intended to lead the believer through a season of sorrow into a deeper walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, using the Old and the New Testaments of Scripture to reveal His finished work on the Cross.