Susan Lafferty“What’s your name?” I ask. And the man stumbles over his answer.
Gives me one response. Then another.
At first I think it’s miscommunication. I’m still learning culture and language, after all.
But soon I hear the story behind the struggle.
His story.
The one who speaks truth finds himself walled in. Weighed down. Worn out.
No hope. Only the crooked path. And a deep pit. Face in the gravel.
Affliction. With no end in sight.
This. When he’s fearlessly made known God’s ways. And wept over the judgment of a disobedient people.
Jeremiah laments.
The psalmist cries out to the Lord. And God hears his cry, inclining His ear toward a desperate appeal. For mercy.
In the telling of his story, the psalmist goes back and forth.
Between relief and alarm. Death and rescue.
The way we often do.
In the context of crisis.
