In
which the exiles lament the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem
Genesis
1:1-5
When
God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste
and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said,
“Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was
good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day,
and the darkness He called Night. And it was evening and it was morning, first
day.
Lamentations
2:1, 2, 13
How
has the Master beclouded in His wrath the daughter of Zion, has flung from the
heavens to the ground the splendor of Israel, nor did He recall His footstool
on the day of His wrath. The Master obliterated, had no mercy, all of Jacob’s
dwellings, brought to the ground, profaned, a kingdom and its nobles.
How
can I bear witness for you, what can I liken to you, O Daughter of Jerusalem?
What can I compare to you and console you, O Virgin, Zion’s Daughter? For great
as the sea is your breaking. Who can heal you?
Genesis
opens not with a primeval planet Earth, but a cosmos centered on a devastated
Jerusalem and desecrated Temple, whose God has gone with His people into exile.
Where
have you known devastation in the past year? Or where have you seen it in the
lives of others? From the impact of a deadly pandemic to homes destroyed by
fires or floods to the cries of asylum seekers falling on the deaf ears of
harden hearts, where do you long for God to speak into the chaos? And dare you
see His judgement on us, in the devastation we sit in? Perhaps only then can we
hope to see light and goodness.
Where
have you been enabled, by, and with, God, to see the light?
Biblical
texts: Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary
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