New Every Morning
In the manual: Come, Follow Me lesson 44, “I Will Turn Their Mourning into Joy,” on Gospel Library
Start
After Babylon burned Jerusalem and its temple, someone wrote five poems of grief. We call them Lamentations. Jewish and Christian tradition says Jeremiah wrote them.
Read Together
Four of the five poems are acrostics. Their verses start with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order. Chapter 3 gives each letter three verses, which is why it has 66 verses.
12Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.
21This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. 22It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. 23They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. 24The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. 25The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. 26It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.
What It Teaches
In chapter 1, Jerusalem calls out to people passing by. “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” The city knew its own sins had brought this (Lamentations 1:8). Sorrow for sin can be the heaviest kind, because we know we had a part in it.
Then, in the middle of the book, the poet remembers something. “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22–23). The city was still in ruins. What changed was where he looked.
Verses 31 to 33 add that “the Lord will not cast off for ever” and that he “doth not afflict willingly.” Alma knew this kind of sorrow. When he remembered Jesus Christ and cried to him for mercy, his pain was gone and joy filled his soul (Alma 36:17–20).
Yesterday Jeremiah sank into the mud of a cistern, and help reached him there. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland made a promise like that about sin. “It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.”
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Laborers in the Vineyard,” General conference, April 2012
Talk About It
What is one mercy from the Lord that was new this morning? How can the sacrament today be a fresh start for each of us?
Take to Church
Lamentations puts a whole alphabet of sorrow into words. In the middle of it, the poet found that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning.