Lamentations 3: The LORD Is Your Portion, and No One Can Take It From You

Introduction

How do you share a cake in the fairest way? The one who cuts the pieces takes the last one. Markus Wüthrich, at FEG Luzern Süd, opens his message with a story: someone cuts a cake into unequal pieces and immediately takes the biggest one. The others are outraged. “And which one would you have taken?” “The smallest one, of course.” “Then I don’t see the problem: it’s the one you have.”

The preacher continues his series on the major prophets with the book of Lamentations, attributed to Jeremiah, “the weeping prophet.” In these five songs, Jeremiah goes through the traumatic events he had announced and had seen with his own eyes.

At the heart of chapter 3, one sentence sums it all up: “Yahweh is my portion,” says my soul; “therefore I will hope in him” (Lamentations 3:24). The Lord is your piece of the cake, the one that no one can snatch from you.

Outline of the message

1. The fine share torn away

The people of Israel lived in a beautiful land that God had assigned to them. In the name of Jerusalem echoes the word “Salem,” shalom, peace. On Mount Zion stood a magnificent temple that shone far and wide.
The inhabitants said: “We received a magnificent piece of the cake, God assigned it to us, it is our share, we are entitled to it.”
Then the army of Babylon came, brutal. It starved the city, tore down the walls, destroyed the temple, carried off the precious objects, raped women and young girls, and deported the young men as slaves. The fine share was torn from them “out of their mouths.”
In the midst of this pain stands Jeremiah, called by God from his childhood to carry his word. No one listens to him, he is imprisoned, terrible things are done to him.
This is true for you too: God placed you in the middle of your time, your family, your neighborhood, your work, your school, so that you would be there and see that he has not withdrawn.

2. Do not whine, but lament before God

Jeremiah names his suffering without detour: “Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers them, and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope” (Lamentations 3:19-21).
The soul sees distress, abandonment, uprooting, bitterness. But Jeremiah sets a “yet” against it.
The preacher thanks several people in the church: their bodies suffer, because of age, an illness or an event, and yet they have chosen gratitude. “Pain says: whine. But you have decided: I want to be thankful.”
Jeremiah also whined a great deal. He cursed the day of his birth. His feet were put in the stocks, he was thrown into an empty cistern full of mud, where he would have died of hunger if a stranger had not taken pity on him.
The preacher quotes Jeremiah 15:18: “Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuses to be healed? Will you indeed be to me as a deceitful brook, as waters that fail?” He sees in it the image of a stream that dries up in summer; dry streams, he adds, we know a little about too.
God confronts him with respect: look at the words you are speaking, they are unworthy. If you return to words that are worth speaking, you will stay in my service. For “I am with you to save you and to deliver you,” says Yahweh (Jeremiah 15:19-20).
God says the same thing in your suffering: I see you, you are not here by chance, you are not alone. I am not here to watch you suffer, but to help you and give you the victory.
Lamenting before God does not deny the pain: it can hurt, it can make you angry. The one who whines stays centered on himself: “Oh, poor me.” The one who laments before God lifts his eyes. “Do not whine. Have the courage to lament by turning to God.”

3. Finding a good language for your soul

You have to learn to speak to your soul: a language guided by the heart and not by pain, by the Spirit and not by the flesh.
The week before, Markus Wüthrich was in Morocco with friends. In the alleys of Marrakech, many things touched him: the fruit sellers who call you to their stalls, a child who bumped into him in a narrow alley and whose look he could not interpret, a woman begging, a man who had set up his bed in the dead end leading to the riad where he was staying.
So he prayed: that these people would hunger and thirst for God, that God would open a door for them to hear the good news of Jesus the Redeemer, which is difficult in a Muslim environment.
He prayed that they would become “people of peace,” that they would discover that Jesus does not lead into servitude but into the freedom of depending on him, that false hopes and the powers of the invisible world would collapse.
He prayed that their painful experiences would become small before the grace of God, “for this grace is for them as much as for you and me.”

4. The LORD’s mercies are new every morning

The congregation proclaims Lamentations 3:22-24 together “in the midst of all the pain”: the Lord’s grace has no end, his compassions never fail, they are new every morning, his faithfulness is great.
Suffering will have an end. Wars will end, famines will cease. The anger of God that Jeremiah experienced was limited: seventy years of captivity in Babylon, that has an end.
But the Lord’s mercies, a plural word, have no end. “It never stops.” In the morning, his grace is brand new, not used up by the stupid dreams of the night, nor by the sins committed the day before.
A person from the church showed the preacher Romans 8:18: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory which will be revealed toward us.”
“We must teach it to our soul.” These thoughts must not sleep in the subconscious waiting to be awakened: they must mark our daily life.
Parents must lead their children in this attitude. Those who have walked with Jesus for a long time must lead the young believers, instead of saying that the fervor of the beginning eventually fades. In this way we help the young to become steady disciples, who choose the joy of the Lord even when it is not fun.
“That is our share of the cake. The LORD is my portion, I want to hope in him, and no one can take him from us.”

5. Waiting quietly for the salvation of the LORD

Hope is not optimism. Optimism says: “I think it will be fine.” Christian hope rests on a God who says: “I am with you, I help you, I save you. My hand holds you, I have plans for happiness and not for disaster.”
It does not merely know that things will get better if we make an effort: it knows that it will be different “because God said so.”
“Yahweh is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of Yahweh. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” (Lamentations 3:25-27).
Jesus told the story of an unjust judge who did not fear God. A poor widow, threatened by adversaries, keeps coming back: “Give me justice.” He finally gives in to have peace. How much more will God do good! But “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:1-8).
It is an active silence: staying attached to God, persevering like that widow. The word translated “salvation” means deliverance, and this word is found in the name of Jesus, Yeshua. Jesus is in person the salvation of God.
The preacher’s friends have been going to Morocco for fifteen years. At the time, a drought was spreading over North Africa as far as Spain. They prayed for rain, and it began to rain, every time they made a prayer trip in the country. This year again, in October, outside the rainy season, it rained a little during the preacher’s stay.

6. A world full of possibilities for God

Wait for the Lord, stay actively silent before him and believe that he will bring justice. God intervenes in our lives, his kingdom enters this world.
This world is not lost without hope. We are not only waiting for Jesus to return to renew everything: this world is full of possibilities for God to show his goodness, his compassion and his faithfulness, in your life, your family, your work, and in the area around southern Lucerne.
And what if your soul found this language in the midst of pain? Instead of keeping that feeling in the pit of your stomach when something is taken from you, you would say: “No, I have the best share, and no one can take it from me.”
Lamenting before God does not mean closing your eyes to what is wrong. It means expressing your emotions, then turning your gaze to that “yet”: “God, please intervene. I don’t understand why you allow this.” Then waiting, coming back again, like the widow.
And what if the salvation in Jesus directed our gaze when we walk the streets of our neighborhood, when we watch the news? All of it becomes opportunities where God’s goodness can enter.
The message ends without reflection questions, with a time of music to let all this sink in: “Teach your soul this language: the Lord is good.”

Key takeaways

Whining keeps you centered on yourself; lamenting before God names the pain and then lifts your eyes with a “yet.”
God does not watch you suffer from afar: he is with you to save you and to deliver you (Jeremiah 15:20).
Sufferings have an end, the LORD’s mercies do not: they are new every morning.
Christian hope is not optimism: it rests on what God has said.
The Lord is your portion, and no one can snatch it from you.

Personal application

Facing what hurts you right now, do you whine or do you bring your complaint before God?
What “fine share” do you feel has been torn from you, and what changes when you say: “the LORD is my portion”?
Which verse, like Lamentations 3:22-24 or Romans 8:18, do you want to teach your soul this week?
Who around you, younger in the faith or in age, needs to see you keep hope in the trial?
For which situation in your neighborhood or in the news can you pray, seeing it as an opportunity for God’s goodness?

Verses cited

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between whining and lamenting before God?

For Markus Wüthrich, the one who whines stays centered on himself: “oh, poor me.” The one who laments before God does not deny his suffering, his anger or his loneliness, but he lifts his eyes. Like Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:21, he says “yet” and turns to the Lord.

What does “the LORD is my portion” mean in Lamentations 3:24?

The preacher starts from the image of a cake being shared. Israel thought it had received its fine share: the land, Jerusalem, the temple. The Babylonians tore it away. Jeremiah discovers a portion that no one can take: the Lord himself. “That is our share of the cake, and no one can take it from us.”

What is the difference between Christian hope and optimism?

Optimism says: “I think it will be fine.” Christian hope rests on a God who speaks and says: “I am with you, I help you, I save you.” It knows that things will change, not because we make an effort, but because God said so. That is why it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.