I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Lamentations 1-2.

    The last few days my blog entries have been short. I suspect that the same will be true today. I find Lamentations to be a difficult part of the Bible to read and comment on. Today’s passage called on the people of God to cry out to God about their suffering, suffering which they had brought upon themselves. Part of what makes this passage hard for me to comment on is that it speaks of corporate guilt and suffering, suffering which is experienced by all the members of a group because most of its members had sinned. I find this difficult because I generally look for things we can apply to ourselves as individuals rather than things which apply to a group, since we do not have control over anyone’s actions other than our own. However, this passage makes it clear that we cannot just look the other way when other people sin, because God will hold us accountable (there is actually a good message on how this works in Ezekiel). We need to express our love for those around us by warning them of the suffering which will result from their sin.
    I wrote in the previous paragraph about our responsibility to call out others for their sins. However, the writer here reminds us that often times we do worse than fail to point out sins, we tell people that their sins are actually service to God. Rather than warn people we tell them that all will be well. If we fail to warn our friends and neighbors of the consequences of their sins we will suffer right along with them. If we love our neighbors as God commands, we will mourn similar to this writer over their suffering. More than that, we will mourn now over the suffering which we foresee if they do not change their ways.