New Every Morning

Lamentations is not a cheerful book. It was written after Jerusalem fell. The temple was burned. Children were hungry in the streets. The writer is sitting in the ashes of everything he loved, and he does not pretend otherwise. He says his soul remembers the wormwood and the gall, the bitter taste of loss. That is honest. God put a book like this in your Bible because He knew you would have mornings that taste like that.

Maybe you woke up today already tired. The coffee is brewing, but your heart is heavy. The diagnosis did not change overnight. The bills are still on the counter. The marriage still feels distant. You are not alone in that kitchen. The man who wrote Lamentations knew that kind of morning.

But then comes verse 21. “Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope.” Notice what he does. His circumstances have not moved an inch. The city is still in ruins. What changes is what he calls to mind. He takes hold of his own thoughts and turns them toward the character of God. Hope does not begin with better news. It begins with better remembering.

And what does he remember? “Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!” He does not say the trouble is small. He says God’s mercy is bigger. We are not consumed. We are still here. And that is not luck. That is the steady love of a covenant-keeping God.

Think about the word new. God does not hand you yesterday’s leftover mercy, warmed up and a little stale. Every morning the supply is fresh. The mercy you needed yesterday was enough for yesterday. The mercy you need today is waiting for you today. You cannot stockpile it, and you do not have to. He is faithful. He shows up again tomorrow.

Now let me be careful. Lamentations is not a promise that every hard thing will be fixed by breakfast. The poet still has to wait, and he says so. “It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.” Some of you are in a long wait. The text does not mock that. It tells you that waiting on God is not wasted time. It is the posture of a soul that has decided the LORD is its portion.

“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul. A portion is your share, your inheritance, the thing that is yours. When everything else was taken from Israel, this man looked up and said, You are what I have left, and You are enough. Friend, that is where the gospel takes us. Jesus went into the ruins for us. He took the bitterness of sin, the wormwood and the gall, on the cross. He rose on the third day. Because of Him, the mercy of God is not just a nice idea. It has a name and a face.

So this morning, before the phone starts buzzing and the day starts pulling, do what the poet did. Call something to mind. Not your worry list. Call to mind who God is. Say it out loud if you have to. His mercies never fail. They are new this morning. Great is His faithfulness. Then walk into your day carrying hope that does not depend on how the day goes.