Excerpt from Lamentations 1: 1-6

"The roads to Zion mourn for no one comes to her appointed feasts; all her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish. Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease.  The Lord has brought her grief because of her many sins.  Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe."  (NIV)

Reflection by Kenneth L. Samuel

The book of Lamentations is a litany of laments over the fall and exile of Judah. The sacking of Jerusalem in 597 BC was followed by the bitterness of the Babylonian exile, which separated many of the most prominent Jews from their homeland for some 60 years. Diminished communities, severed families and stolen citizens gave the children of Israel much to lament, and their mourning is graphically and even poetically expressed in Lamentations.

But Lamentations is not just a book of sorrowful expressions on behalf of Babylon's victims.  It is also a statement that challenges and convicts the victims themselves. The writer of Lamentations is clear that Israel's sorrowful fate is the result of her own transgressions. In fact, according to Lamentations, the Babylonian exile was essentially the instrument God used to chastise and correct God's people.

As an African American, I realize how dangerous it is to even suggest that victims are somehow responsible for their own victimization.  Black people do not deserve racism. Women do not deserve abuse or patriarchy. Gulf Coast residents did not deserve Katrina or the BP disaster. Haiti did not deserve the earthquake, and no one, regardless of sexual orientation, deserves HIV/AIDS.

No one deserves to be victimized. Yet, no one, victim or victimizer, is exempt from divine judgment. From time to time, the conviction contained in Lamentations causes me to interrupt my litany of sorrow regarding my own victimization and consider how my own recklessness, my own egotism and my own lack of conscientious gratitude for all that God provides, may have contributed to my own calamities. And while I am very sorry about the wounds inflicted upon me by others, what hurts me even more are my self-inflicted wounds.

Prayer

Lord, today I ask that you have mercy upon my enemies, even as I realize that in many instances, I have been my own worst enemy. Amen.

About the Author Kenneth L. Samuel is Pastor of Victory for the World Church, Stone Mountain, Georgia.