When I
was a child, one of my favorite pastimes was playing on the teeter-totter in
the nearby park. A kid would sit on each end of the board and bounce each other
up and down. Sometimes the one who was down would stay there and leave his
playmate stuck up in the air yelling to be let down. But the cruelest of all
tricks was getting off the teeter-totter and running away when your friend was
up in the air—he would come crashing down to the ground with a painful bump.
Sometimes
we may feel that Jesus does that to us. We trust Him to be there with us
through the ups and downs of life. However, when life takes a turn and leaves
us with bumps and bruises, it may feel as if He has walked away leaving our
lives to come painfully crashing down.
But Lamentations 3 reminds us that “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end” (v.22 esv) and that God is faithful to the end even when everything seems to be falling apart. This means that in the midst of our pain, even though we may be lonely, we are not alone. And though we may not feel His presence, He is there as our trusted companion who will never walk away and let us down!
