Day Fifteen - Misery

 

Human Misery by Paul Gauguin
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 

If 'horror' is short and sharp, misery is long and drawn out.  Misery grinds.  The only way to cope with misery is to have a plan.  In South America the liberation theologians had a plan.  They noted that as the 'jack-boot' of the system pressed their heads into the dust, they were able to release themselves from their bodies an float like birds in the skies above their oppressors.

Now the old testament has a lot to say about this subject!  My rendition reduces the misery of reading long chapters, by take the liberty of wielding the editor's knife.

Lamentations Chapter 4

Precious gold is now as useful as mud.

Our children were our gold, and now they are clay.

Even the jackal feeds it’s young, but not our infants.

Once spoilt princes called for ‘this and that’.

Now they search through rubbish dumps; faces covered in soot.

Those slaughtered by the sword are better off that the living dead.

Terrible acts of depravity are seen as the siege continues.

The fire of the Creator’s anger is being quenched. There is nothing left that is flammable.

No one assumed that Jerusalem could be destroyed; only those who knew it came of her own wrong-doing.

PRAYER: The steadfast love of the Creator never fails. The Creator’s mercies never come to an end.  They are new every morning!