Lamentations 1, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

 
Max Lucado Daily: BIDDY CHAMBERS

During World War I, Biddy Chambers, her husband, and small daughter moved to Egypt, where he served as a chaplain.  He taught, she transcribed.  It was a perfect partnership.

Then her husband’s complications from appendicitis rendered Biddy a widow.  All dreams of a teaching ministry would have to be abandoned, right?  No.  She turned her husband’s notes into pamphlets.  Eventually they were compiled into a book, My Utmost for His Highest.  This work of Oswald Chambers has sold more than thirteen million copies and has been translated into more than thirty-five languages.

The next time you feel overwhelmed remind yourself of the One who is standing next to you.  Give him what you have, offer thanks, and watch him go to work.  Remember, friends, you are never alone.

Lamentations 1

Worthless, Cheap, Abject!

Oh, oh, oh . . .
How empty the city, once teeming with people.
    A widow, this city, once in the front rank of nations,
    once queen of the ball, she’s now a drudge in the kitchen.

2 She cries herself to sleep each night, tears soaking her pillow.
    No one’s left among her lovers to sit and hold her hand.
    Her friends have all dumped her.

3 After years of pain and hard labor, Judah has gone into exile.
    She camps out among the nations, never feels at home.
    Hunted by all, she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place.

4 Zion’s roads weep, empty of pilgrims headed to the feasts.
    All her city gates are deserted, her priests in despair.
    Her virgins are sad. How bitter her fate.

5 Her enemies have become her masters. Her foes are living it up
    because God laid her low, punishing her repeated rebellions.
    Her children, prisoners of the enemy, trudge into exile.

6 All beauty has drained from Daughter Zion’s face.
    Her princes are like deer famished for food,
    chased to exhaustion by hunters.

7 Jerusalem remembers the day she lost everything,
    when her people fell into enemy hands, and not a soul there to help.
    Enemies looked on and laughed, laughed at her helpless silence.

8 Jerusalem, who outsinned the whole world, is an outcast.
    All who admired her despise her now that they see beneath the surface.
    Miserable, she groans and turns away in shame.

9 She played fast and loose with life, she never considered tomorrow,
    and now she’s crashed royally, with no one to hold her hand:
    “Look at my pain, O God! And how the enemy cruelly struts.”

10 The enemy reached out to take all her favorite things. She watched
    as pagans barged into her Sanctuary, those very people for whom
    you posted orders: keep out: this assembly off-limits.

11 All the people groaned, so desperate for food, so desperate to stay alive
    that they bartered their favorite things for a bit of breakfast:
    “O God, look at me! Worthless, cheap, abject!

12 “And you passersby, look at me! Have you ever seen anything like this?
    Ever seen pain like my pain, seen what he did to me,
    what God did to me in his rage?

13 “He struck me with lightning, skewered me from head to foot,
    then he set traps all around so I could hardly move.
    He left me with nothing—left me sick, and sick of living.

14 “He wove my sins into a rope
    and harnessed me to captivity’s yoke.
    I’m goaded by cruel taskmasters.

15 “The Master piled up my best soldiers in a heap,
    then called in thugs to break their fine young necks.
    The Master crushed the life out of fair virgin Judah.

16 “For all this I weep, weep buckets of tears,
    and not a soul within miles around cares for my soul.
    My children are wasted, my enemy got his way.”

17 Zion reached out for help, but no one helped.
    God ordered Jacob’s enemies to surround him,
    and now no one wants anything to do with Jerusalem.

18 “God has right on his side. I’m the one who did wrong.
    Listen everybody! Look at what I’m going through!
    My fair young women, my fine young men, all herded into exile!

19 “I called to my friends; they betrayed me.
    My priests and my leaders only looked after themselves,
    trying but failing to save their own skins.

20 “O God, look at the trouble I’m in! My stomach in knots,
    my heart wrecked by a life of rebellion.
    Massacres in the streets, starvation in the houses.

21 “Oh, listen to my groans. No one listens, no one cares.
    When my enemies heard of the trouble you gave me, they cheered.
    Bring on Judgment Day! Let them get what I got!

22 “Take a good look at their evil ways and give it to them!
    Give them what you gave me for my sins.
    Groaning in pain, body and soul, I’ve had all I can take.”

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion    
Friday, October 16, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:

Matthew 13:31–35

The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast
31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds[a] of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. 35 So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet:

“I will open my mouth in parables,
    I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”[b]

Footnotes
Matthew 13:33 Or about 27 kilograms
Matthew 13:35 Psalm 78:2

Insight
Matthew’s use of Old Testament prophecy is often intriguing, and that’s certainly the case in Matthew 13:35. After Jesus had told several parables, Matthew asserts that this type of teaching fulfills prophecy. The statement he cites, however, doesn’t come from one of the acknowledged prophets of Israel but from one of their psalmists—Asaph, the worship leader in Psalm 78:2. This might have surprised Jewish readers in the first century, but it shouldn’t be a surprise to us. In a sense, all of the Old Testament points to Jesus in one way or another. When walking with two disciples on the Emmaus Road on resurrection day, Jesus explained to them, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, “what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).

Slow, but Sure
Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree.  Matthew 13:32

I ran into an old friend who told me what he’d been up to, but I confess it seemed too good to be true. Within a few months of that conversation, however, his band was everywhere—from charting top singles on the radio to having a hit song pulsing under TV ads. His rise to fame was meteoric.

We can be obsessed with significance and success—the big and the dramatic, the quick and the meteoric. But the parables of the mustard seed and yeast compare the way of the kingdom (God’s reign on earth) to small, hidden, and seemingly insignificant things whose work is slow and gradual.

The kingdom is like its King. Christ’s mission culminated in His life, like a seed, being buried in the ground; like yeast, being hidden in the dough. Yet He rose. Like a tree breaking through the dirt, like bread when the heat is turned up. Jesus rose.

We’re invited to live according to His way, the way that’s persisting and permeating. To resist the temptation to take matters into our own hands, to grasp for power and to justify our dealings in the world by the outcomes they may produce. The outcome—“a tree . . . that the birds come and perch in its branches” (v. 32) and the bread that provides a feast—will be Christ’s doing, not ours. By:  Glenn Packiam

Reflect & Pray
What small and seemingly insignificant things could you do to encourage or bless the people in your life? Where do you need to turn away from comparison with others or from a false picture of significance and success?

Dear Jesus, thank You for often working in small, hidden, and seemingly insignificant ways. Help me to trust You’re at work even when I can’t see You. Grant me the grace to remain faithful.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, October 16, 2020
The Key to the Master’s Orders

Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. —Matthew 9:38

The key to the missionary’s difficult task is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work— that is, not work as the word is commonly used today, which often results in the shifting of our focus away from God. The key to the missionary’s difficult task is also not the key of common sense, nor is it the key of medicine, civilization, education, or even evangelization. The key is in following the Master’s orders— the key is prayer. “Pray the Lord of the harvest….” In the natural realm, prayer is not practical but absurd. We have to realize that prayer is foolish from the commonsense point of view.

From Jesus Christ’s perspective, there are no nations, but only the world. How many of us pray without regard to the persons, but with regard to only one Person— Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest that is produced through distress and through conviction of sin. This is the harvest for which we have to pray that laborers be sent out to reap. We stay busy at work, while people all around us are ripe and ready to be harvested; we do not reap even one of them, but simply waste our Lord’s time in over-energized activities and programs. Suppose a crisis were to come into your father’s or your brother’s life— are you there as a laborer to reap the harvest for Jesus Christ? Is your response, “Oh, but I have a special work to do!” No Christian has a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own, “a servant [who] is not greater than his master” (John 13:16), and someone who does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls us to no special work— He calls us to Himself. “Pray the Lord of the harvest,” and He will engineer your circumstances to send you out as His laborer.

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading.  My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L

Bible in a Year: Isaiah 47-49; 1 Thessalonians 4

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, October 16, 2020
Wasting What's Worth So Much - #8810

Some of us are a little "old school." We still pay our bills with an envelope and a stamp and mail it in. At least we pay our bills. I know what it is to need a stamp; you've got something that has to be mailed - could be an urgent bill. You've got spoiled by having electricity in your house, and you really don't want to see what it's like without it. Your electric bill is due, the check is written, the envelope is addressed, and you can't find a stamp. But something that happened during a recent election has to be the ultimate postage desperation. An absentee ballot arrived with an unusual stamp on the envelope; a picture of an inverted World War I airplane. The news report said that stamp may very well have been a rare collector's item worth $200,000! Postage rates might continue to go up, but this is like out of control!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Wasting What's Worth So Much."

The sad thing is that somebody pretty much wasted what was worth so much. But that was just a stamp, and maybe money that got wasted. What's tragic is when a person makes that mistake with their life. And, sadly, many people have no idea what they're worth. They live like it with choices that cause them so much hurt, so much disappointment and so many scars. If you don't know what you're worth, you go through life just settling...settling for whatever love, whatever pleasure, whatever acceptance you can get. Usually at a high price tag to the very worth you're trying to find.

Cindy was like that. She'd never had many dates or a lot of male attention. She called me one night because a guy she'd dated two or three times wanted her to have sex with him. She valued her virginity, but she didn't want to lose the one guy who made her feel wanted. I gave her what she called for - I gave her reasons to save her virginity. Frankly, it didn't do much good. When he threatened to leave, she agreed to have sex with him. She called back a couple of weeks later. The guy had gotten what he wanted, and he dumped her, leaving her feeling more worthless even than she had before.

One sad example of the kinds of compromises and bad choices you make when you don't know what you're worth and you're trying to find it. There's only one person who can really change that, and that's the One who gave you your worth in the first place. The Bible says you are "God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10).

See, it breaks your Creator's heart when you trash the masterpiece He made when He made you. That's what our sinning does - all those countless times we've said or done things that defy God's laws. The selfishness, the angry things, the hurting things, the dirty things, the things that are more important to us than God. All those choices have cut us off from the One who gave us our worth. And only He can get us back to Him. You discover your worth when you open up to God's amazing love.

Love described in our word for today from the Word of God in Revelation 5:9. It says of Jesus, "With your blood You purchased men for God." That's how much you are worth to Jesus - the shedding of His blood to get you back. It was the only way the death penalty for your sin and mine could be paid; someone who had no sin, taking our punishment for us. That's what Jesus did for you on the cross, and that is how much He loves you.

And that's why what you do with Jesus is so important. Without Him, you'll never experience the love you were made for. The forgiveness He paid for. The heaven you hope you'll get to. But He's come to you today, where you are, to offer you an opportunity to begin a personal love relationship with Him, if you'll turn from the sin that He had to die for and pin all your hopes on Him. He is, after all, the only One you can totally, totally trust.

I'm praying you'll reach out to Him this very day. And I'm going to just continue to pray that you'll go to our website. Because that's where you will find the information that will help you through what God's Word says, to be sure you belong to Jesus. That website is ANewStory.com.

Jesus loved you enough to die for you. Why not live for the One who loves you the most, and discover how valuable you really are.