R³ Devotional - Day 238

“New Every Morning”

Lamentations 3 doesn’t flinch. It opens with pain. The voice of the prophet breaks under the weight of affliction: “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.” God feels distant. Worse, God feels opposed. Jeremiah names the unbearable; when even your prayers feel locked out, when your soul feels trapped in darkness, when you’re no longer sure where hope begins or ends.

This is what it means to lament: not to deny God’s sovereignty, but to bring your wounds into His presence and tell the truth about them. Real lament allows space for the silence, the ache, the unanswered questions. But it doesn’t stop there.

Jeremiah was not just grieving a nation; he was living through personal ruin. He had seen friends die, sacred spaces destroyed, and everything familiar swallowed up by judgment. His words bleed with exhaustion: “He has made my skin and my flesh grow old… He has walled me in so I cannot escape.” This is the voice of a man who is completely undone. He is not polishing his prayers. He is weeping into the rubble.
And yet—in the midst of anguish—a shift.
In verse 21, something changes. The most fragile phrase appears: “Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.”
Not because the pain has vanished. Not because judgment has lifted. But because even now, especially now, God’s mercy holds steady.
“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.”
This is not sentiment. It’s survival. Jeremiah isn’t clinging to a feeling; he’s clinging to a truth. That God’s mercy doesn’t run on our timelines. That compassion isn’t something we earn. It’s something He renews.

The Hebrew word for compassion here, rachamim, comes from the same root as a mother’s womb. It speaks of tender, nurturing care. A love that does not recoil from weakness but draws closer to it. Jeremiah is telling us: even in judgment, God has not stopped being who He is. His justice does not erase His mercy. His discipline does not cancel His faithfulness.
We may stumble into each morning with yesterday’s questions, yesterday’s grief, yesterday’s regret, but God brings new mercies to meet us there. His faithfulness isn’t measured by how we feel; it’s proven by the fact that we’re still breathing. That mercy was waiting before your eyes opened. That He’s not ashamed to meet you again, even in the ruins.

This is who God is: unchanging in holiness, unwavering in compassion, and unmatched in covenant faithfulness. He is not reactionary—He does not love you more on your good days and tolerate you on the bad ones. He is the God who remembers that we are dust, yet calls us beloved. The God who allows sorrow to shape us, not to shatter us. The God whose mercy doesn’t just rescue, but restores.

Jeremiah’s pain wasn’t imagined. And neither is yours. You may feel buried by disappointment, spiritual dryness, or self-inflicted wounds. Maybe you’re holding silent grief from a loss no one else saw. Or shame from a mistake that still haunts you in the quiet. You may wonder if God still hears, still sees, still intends to redeem anything from what you’ve lost.

But the God of Lamentations 3 is not a stranger to sorrow. He sits with you in it. He disciplines, but He does not cast off forever. He binds up again and again, because His love will not let you go.

The same prophet who once felt shut in by darkness now declares that "The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him." This isn’t denial. It’s trust forged in suffering. It’s the confession of someone who has seen devastation and still believes God is better than his circumstances.

Maybe today you feel distant from God—worn thin by grief or hardened by waiting. Maybe you're walking through a valley where light barely breaks through. But even here, God does not change. His mercy is not reserved for the deserving; it's offered to the desperate. It is new, not because He ran out, but because He delights in giving again.

We wait not in empty silence but in expectant hope. Because if mercy rises with the morning, then today is not too late to return. If His compassions never fail, then there is no yesterday strong enough to undo today’s grace. So today, if you feel numb, or tired, or unsure, just lift your eyes. You don’t have to explain everything. Just come. His mercy has already risen.
If breath remains, so does the mercy that called it forth.

Reflection Questions:
When have you felt most forgotten by God? Did you let lament lead you back to Him—or further away?
What would it look like for you to receive His mercy today without resisting it?
Are there patterns of guilt, fear, or control that are preventing you from waiting quietly for the Lord?

Closing Prayer:
God,
You know what I carry; the weight I never meant to hold this long.
You see the places I’ve grown numb, the questions I’ve buried, and the fears I still pretend aren’t there. But You don’t despise my brokenness. You meet me in it. Let me feel the quiet weight of Your mercy today. Remind me that it is new; not recycled, not forced, not reluctant. New. Every morning. I will wait for You, not because I’m strong, but because I know You are faithful.
Even here. Even now.
Amen.