How Lonely Sits the City

 

Lamentations 1:1-10

 

July 30, 2025

 

How Lonely Sits the City

How lonely sits the city that was full of people!  How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations!  She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave.  She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers, she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.  Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and hard servitude; she dwells now among the nations, but finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress.  The roads to Zion mourn, for none come to the festival, all her gates are desolate;
Her priests groan; her virgins have been afflicted, and she herself suffers bitterly.  Her foes have become the head; her enemies prosper, because the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions.
Her children have gone away, captives before the foe.  From the daughter of Zion all her majesty has departed.  Her princes have become like deer that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer.  Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and wandering all the precious things that were hers from days of old.  When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was none to help her, her foes gloated over her; they mocked at her downfall.  Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore, she became filthy; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns her face away.  Her uncleanness was in her skirts; she took no thought of her future; therefore, her fall is terrible; she has no comforter.  “O Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!”  The enemy has stretched out his hands over all her precious things; for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, those whom you forbade to enter your congregation.

 

If you have read the first ten verses and have discernment, you may be asking how such a great nation fell captive to Babylonia.  You might look at the Roman Empire.  They both sinned grievously, and yet God’s chosen people slowly left the God who had given them the land He had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  You would have believed that a people who had been slaves in Egypt and seen all that God did for them under Moses and Joshua's leadership, and how God fought for them, and provided for their needs, and brought them into a land He promised, would have taught their sons and daughters to honor God in their hearts, minds, and souls.  But the bottom line is the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions.  And the Lamentations are for the sins of turning from the God who chose them from all the nations of the world.

 

Should this be a wake-up call for the people of the United States of America?  I know of a few places where people from many countries are trying to come, not China, not Russia, but over 20 million have come illegally into the USA. 

 

This nation has been blessed with so much, but today, as a whole, people are putting their trust in many things, but not in our Creator and God.  Has the USA gone the way of most nations that God has judged, yes, and it has become a darkness where often evil has prevailed. 

 

Fear is used to sell just about everything, and good is being called evil, and our universities are being used by foreign governments to hate people they have never met, such as the Jewish people.

 

Many a pastor has put the fear of men above teaching the Scriptures and has made sure they did not offer anyone.  Someone asked me about growing up in small Baptist churches, and I said, I saw some of the meanest people and some of the best, and overall it was more about religion than teaching how to be a Christ Follower.

 

This is my belief: time is running out for this nation, unless we have a spiritual awakening.

 

From our Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice