Lamentations 3:22-23, for a night you want to be over

Why Lamentations 3:22-23 helps on a long night

Some nights are mainly about getting through: grief, a hospital chair, a baby who will not settle, a mind that has been turning since midnight. On those nights a verse that tells you to be calm can feel like a scold. This one simply tells you the night has an end.

New every morning is a promise about time. Whatever you used up today, God’s kindness comes back new at dawn, the way the light does, whether or not you slept.

It also begins honestly: we are not consumed. That is the language of someone who has come close to the edge. The writer claims only that the story is not finished.

How to use Lamentations 3:22-23 tonight

1. Say plainly what is making tonight long. You can say it the way Lamentations does, as a complaint. God can hear a complaint.
2. Read the verse once. Then read only They are new every morning. Think of the first grey light at the window, and know it is already on its way.
3. If you are watching the clock, turn it to face the wall. Morning will come at its own pace, and you do not need to count it in.
4. Pray the last line as your own: Great is your faithfulness. Add a word about tonight if you have one.
5. For a calm screen in the meantime, the quiet room keeps these words up with real recorded rain or silence, and a timer that only fades.

Where these words come from

Lamentations is five poems of grief written after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 587 or 586 BC. The book does not name its author; tradition has long linked it to the prophet Jeremiah, who lived through the fall of the city.

Chapter 3 is the most personal of the five. Its first twenty verses describe a man who feels walled in and made to walk in darkness. Then in verse 21 he says he will call something to mind, and hope begins. Verses 22 and 23 are what he remembers. His situation is the same, and his memory of who God is has woken up.

Chapter 3 is also an acrostic. Its 66 verses come in groups of three, each group starting with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The poet held his grief inside a careful form, line by line, and grief given words and a shape can be prayed.

Loving kindnesses is the Hebrew hesed, the loyal love that keeps its promises. Compassion comes from a root related to the Hebrew word for womb, the tender mercy of a mother.