8.10.2026 - Jody Duncan

August 10, 2026

This week's devotions are by Jody Duncan.

Lamentations 3:16-24

God gives us his faithfulness

The prophet Jeremiah is in a dark place in Chapter 3 of Lamentations. The setting is the aftermath of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. The temple has been burned, and the Israelites have been forced into exile.

As Chapter 3 starts, Jeremiah is in agony, feeling as if God has abandoned him and all his people. He speaks of God as if he is the enemy. He describes God as having torn him to pieces, made him the subject of ridicule, “broken his teeth with gravel.”

“My strength and my hope have perished from the Lord,” he says.

But then, Jeremiah emerges from this dark place, recalling that God’s compassion never fails, and that his faithfulness is new every morning.

Jeremiah allows himself to hope.

There is a seemingly cynical saying that ‘hope is just delayed disappointment.’ It is attributed to psychologist Laura Schlessigner. I listened to Dr. Schlessinger when she was on the radio very late at night and I had a baby who would not sleep. I’d rock her for long periods of time, listening to Dr. Laura, the volume set very low in the background. I credit her with leaving me the breadcrumbs of wisdom I needed to change my life.

Her statement about hope is not as cynical as it sounds. What she meant was that if we want our lives to get better, we can’t just sit around passively wishing it so. We must do something.

For Jeremiah, who represents all the disaffected people of Israel, hoping was, itself, ‘doing something.’ It was an initial act of faith leading him out of despair.

I recall an interview with Christopher Reeve after his devastating accident that left him a quadriplegic. In the interview, he said he was certain that he would walk again. Sadly, he did not. He died without ever having taken another step. So, was his hope foolish, even silly? In my opinion, the answer is ‘no.’ His hope wasn’t at all foolish. It was an expression of faith in the future, which in turn was the catalyst for a foundation dedicated to spinal cord injuries. (That foundation has, to date, invested $145 million toward spinal cord injury research, and awarded another $45 million in quality-of-life grants.)

Hope instigated all that goodness.

I imagine that Reeve’s hope also allowed him to enjoy the few years he had with his wife and children before he died. It got him out of bed – albeit with a lot of help from caretakers – every morning. It gave his life purpose.

What Jeremiah tells us in these two verses is that our hope is justified, because God is forever faithful. His mercies are new every morning. They don’t fade or atrophy.

Everything in our world decays. Entropy is a real thing. Even the sun is dying. But God is forever, and his faithfulness never decays, never wavers, never dims. That gives us reason to hope.

In a well-known and well-loved hymn, we sing God’s praises with these words: Great is Thy Faithfulness!

Great, indeed.