How To Handle Your Problems - Lamentations 3:37-42

"Who can command things to happen without the Lord’s permission? Does not the Most High send both calamity and good? Then why should we, mere humans, complain when we are punished for our sins? Instead, let us test and examine our ways. Let us turn back to the Lord. Let us lift our hearts and hands to God in heaven and say, We have sinned and rebelled, and you have not forgiven us." The book of Lamentations is attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. The context for the book is the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. Each of the first four chapters of Lamentations is an acrostic, laid out in the order of the Hebrew alphabet. The first word of each verse begins with a successive Hebrew letter. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 have one verse for each of the twenty-two Hebrew letters. Chapter 3 contains twenty-two stanzas of three verses each. In this chapter the author laments what has happened, remembers the faithful love of God, and then describes how God’s people should react when they are confronted with problems and suffering. We know that some calamities have natural causes and we know that bad things happen to the righteous as well as to the wicked. The author of Lamentations sees all calamity as coming from the Lord (or at least permitted by the Lord). That is a theologically sound position because God can use people's suffering to build their faithfulness and trust in Him. Our dilemma, however, is not necessarily to explain the cause of a calamity so much as to have an appropriate response to our troubles. So it's not why we have problems but rather how we handle them. The writer says that through calamity God provides us an opportunity to examine our lives and repent and draw closer to Him. Calamity gives God the chance to redirect us into doing His will. Thus, complaining is an inappropriate response to calamity because it is a form of rebellion against God. Contrition compounded with thanksgiving is the appropriate response because it acknowledges God's sovereignty and in so doing we yield or submit our own will to His Sovereign Will.