It is God’s purpose that those of us who experience trials may find comfort and then use our experience of being comforted to comfort others who are going through similar or not so similar kinds of trial. We are, to use a modern phrase, to pass it on.

The book of Lamentation, as its name suggests, is a lamentation. The prophet Jeremiah wrote it in the aftermath of the devastation of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BC. It is a very sad book. If you can read it without feeling anything, you are probably not reading it with understanding. This is probably not a book that many of us will turn to when we feel discouraged. But in the midst of it is one of the most beautiful and comforting verses in the bible.