Jeremiah may or may not have been the author of Lamentations. Does it matter? I don’t care who wrote what when you get down to it. The critical question is does it speak truth? Is there LIFE in the words. While the context and times of the of this piece of the Biblical library of some 66 books (if you’re Western Protestant) is about the Fall of of Jerusalem and the Temple to the Babylonians in 587BCE, it speaks to our FUTURE!
There are two particular verses that encourage me and they’re both found in the alphabetic acrostic poetry of the third chapter. What both messages say is that God is so loving that He wouldn’t condemn anyone to hell for eternity. So, why do we preach such crap?
Control! It’s one of the many ways the church scares and controls people!
Think about it.
If you knew that you’d be punished for your misdeeds, but you’d get to spend eternity in heaven, why on earth (no pun intended) would you go to church? What would be the NEED? It would have to be totally altruistic now wouldn’t it! And who lives there these days? Go to church for LOVE? Sure!
Verse 22 tells us that God’s unfailing love will not allow us to be totally destroyed. Make sure you read “totally” as not a good thing and a reason to not back off of loving God and your neighbor.
Verse 31 says that God will not cast us off forever (KJV), or that His rejection doesn’t last forever (REB). In the REB, the next verse reads as follows, “He may punish, yet He will have compassion in the fullness of His unfailing love; He does not willingly afflict or punish any mortal.”
Lament no mas!
A pretty darned good understanding and consciousness for something written 2,500 years ago, don’t you think?
Maybe INSPIRED? 
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