The city falls

After centuries of prophets warning them, Jerusalem falls. The walls are broken, the temple is burned, the vessels are carried off, and the people are marched to Babylon. This is the lowest point in Israel's history and the Bible does not skip it or explain it away. Lamentations sits in the middle of Scripture as five poems of grief with no happy ending attached — a book that lets people say out loud that it hurts. And in the exact centre of it, surrounded on both sides by devastation, are the lines the church has sung ever since: his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Not written from safety. Written in the ruins, by someone who had lost everything and could still see that far.