OWNING UP August 11, 2020

One seems to be receiving mixed signals these days.  Some groups say the pandemic is getting worse, and rally calls for stricter or longer community quarantine regulations, with more discriminatory and tighter border controls.  Some camps also on the other hand say that there is a slight but “very” material improvement on the lowering of cases, and so, there is a chance that stricter regulations may be relaxed soon.  While the vaccines are racing on the second and third testing stages, many children around the world who have been sent to school on face-to-face basis have tested positive, while those who have stayed at home to learn online have experienced serious inadequacies in their learnings and instructions.  And on the ground, there are more troubling news, for job losses, business closures, and the unemployed keep piling up, so that one comment was, yes, we have to be wary and watchful of our health, but if there is no more livelihood, how can one live?  If parents have no more source of income, how can we take care of our health and support our families?

 

The world now rationalizes in a vicious cycle, because indeed, for one who only focuses on what is happening around us, there seems to be no end in sight yet.  And in the Word we read today, majority of its contents is a condemnation on a once-great people who have turned their backs to GOD and have met life’s tragedies as a result.  In the Prophet Jeremiah’s book on Lamentations chapter 4, we read that Israel (which should serve as our example for the sufferings we are going through now) once was so rich (verse 1), its people so refined and looked up to (verse 2), and yet when GOD punished them for their sins (verse 11), experienced dire and abject poverty, famine, filthiness, starvation and even cannibalism (verses 3 to 10).

 

What happened to them?  They were invaded by the enemy, and their strong army was defeated, so that the enemy have entered into the gates (verse 12), ones they were so proud of before in their glory years.  They were exiled and became wanderers, defiled and unwanted by people who have the capacity to help them, dispersed and scattered as a people (verses 14 to 16), pursued and destroyed by their enemies (verses 17 to 20), and captured as slaves and as prisoners in foreign lands.

 

Why? Because of the sins of the people, her leaders, some of her prophets and priests, who have murdered the innocents (verse 13), and who did not respect her elders and faithful ministers (verse 16).

 

Many of these things we are also seeing today around the world—how the young disrespect their parents and elders, how persons in authority and guardians abuse those under their care and jurisdiction, how people entrusted with public funds corrupt themselves and are even proudly living it up, how some of the world’s richest people drive their employees into slavery as long as they earn much, much more, how the prejudiced and biased believe in their own superiority and harass or abuse those whom they think are beneath them because of their gender or the color of their skin, how oppressive governments arrest those who call them out for their abuses, wrongdoings and mismanagement, how they stifle free speech, how they stomp down on people’s rights to faith and free information, how people who gather in assembly to call for accountability and justice start out peacefully airing their grievances but quickly escalate into high tension resulting in deaths and injuries not only on the protesters but even on the peace-and-order implementing personnel.  It seems that as a global community, many of us have lost our way.  We have forgotten to whom we owe our lives to, thinking that because we know many things and have a long line up of academic and professional qualifications and well-established connections, we know everything, and anybody who has an ounce of criticism should be silenced and be rendered immaterial.  Sadly, as what we read today, the suffering we are going through in life right now is not a nightmare.  It is reality, and it is only just beginning.

 

But we can still hold on to hope, for even in this tragic book, there is always a glimmer of deliverance.  In the last two verses (verses 21 and 22) the Prophet Jeremiah turned his attention away from calling out Israel on her sins and her sufferings, but focused on a nation or a people (or in our case, the mysterious “one” adversary who started it all) in saying that they can rejoice, but only for a little while, because the evil that they have brought on GOD’s people will surely go back to them.  And the punishment and suffering of GOD’s people will be brought to an end, but GOD Himself will take revenge on those who caused her to sin and fall in the first place. 

 

These things make one think about the cause of our sufferings, where it really doesn’t matter who, as what conspiracy theorists would like to know, but the important thing is the why, the when, and the how.  We know that as a people we have sinned against GOD and disobeyed His righteous laws and instructions.  We have destroyed His beautiful creation for the sake of profit, and for greed have destroyed the lives, the dignity and the humanity of many others who do not have the same means as us.  Like His people of old, the only hope for us is to own up to our sins and shortcomings, renew our lives and subject to His will as He disciplines and molds us, because even if the hour and day be unknown, pretty soon, there will be an end to all our troubles.  The only way for us then on how we can remain strong and persevere is to own up to our faults and stop pretending like we know everything and we are in control, so that when our trials and tribulations let up, we too can own a portion of His great promises.