Lamentations 3:22–23 (NIV)

Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations is exactly what the name promises — five chapters of grief over a city in ruins, a people in exile, a covenant that seemed, by every outward sign, to have failed. The writer describes himself as a man who has forgotten what happiness is, whose strength and hope have perished.

And then, right in the middle of that wreckage, comes this turn: because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed.

This isn't comfort offered from a safe distance, after the crisis has passed. It's comfort spoken from inside the rubble, by someone who has every reason to despair and chooses instead to remember. The mercies aren't new because the trouble has ended. They're new every morning. God's faithfulness isn't about whether our circumstances have improved. It's measured by whether God is still God, morning after morning, regardless of what the night before contained.

Many of us have sung the old hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," which comes directly from this passage. There’s no escape from trouble. But there is promise of a faithfulness that outlasts the trouble — summer and winter, springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses, all bearing witness to a mercy that renews itself daily rather than running out.

We tend to want comfort that changes our situation. What Lamentations 3 offers is comfort that changes what we can stand on while the situation remains what it is.

And that comfort is "new every morning." We measure faithfulness by consistency of outcome — did the plan work, did the prayer get answered, did the trouble go away. Scripture measures it differently: faithfulness is God showing up again, today, possibly in a way different from yesterday.

That's covenant language. It's the same God who bound himself to Israel in the wilderness binding himself to us now — not because we've earned it, but because that's who he has committed to be.

If you're in a season where the comfort you want hasn't come, this passage doesn't ask you to pretend otherwise. It asks you to notice that you woke up this morning still held, still experiencing the mercy that has been been renewed once again today. Your discomfort may be the same, but God offers new mercies morning by morning.

Prayer:

Lord, when our circumstances offer us no comfort, let us find it in you — not because our trouble has ended, but because your mercy is new again this morning, as it was yesterday, as it will be tomorrow. Great is your faithfulness. Amen.

This devotional was written and read by Jim Stovall.

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