HOW?
(Lamentations 1:1-6)
Desolate, empty,
how lonely stands the city,
its lifeblood exiled.
A city widowed,
vulnerable, comfortless,
distressed, deserted.
In calamity
our first thoughts don’t turn to “Why?”
but perhaps to “How?” *
We lament the “now”:
the mud, rubble, dust, ash, loss
of life upended.
When tragedy strikes,
God, not one to interfere,
is weeping with us.
Jeff Shrowder, 2025
* ‘How’ is the first word of Lamentations and so, in the Hebrew, gives the book its name. It is the word which begins other laments across the First Testament.
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