How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! Lamentations 1:1
The book of Lamentations is probably not recommended for folks with depression. It was written, not everybody agrees it was by Jeremiah, in the aftermath of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in BC 587. It is filled with the anguished response to that destruction, beginning with a description of the desolation of the city, and ending with a lament from the survivors. It is also a sorrowful lament for the incredible suffering of those forced into exile in Babylon and of those few who escaped the deportations but were plunged into poverty in the land. Our Bible records only one sorrow that was deeper than that.
Even as Lamentations speaks of the sorrowful state of Jerusalem and its few remaining inhabitants, it also contains a prophetic reference to an even deeper sorrow. Read verse 12 of the first chapter: ‘Is 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’. Here we see somewhat of the sorrowful agony of the Lord Jesus at Gethsemane. After His tears at His rejection by Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus could go from the Last Supper out to the garden, where Matthew tells us He began to be sorrowful and very heavy, and where He told His disciples ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death’. Of his prayers at that time, Luke writes, ‘And being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. What great sorrow! Not even His disciples could follow Him there.
Our Saviour’s sorrows that were magnified at Gethsemane were intensified at Gabbatha, as false accusations and demands for His crucifixion prevailed among the fickle crowd, and a cowardly governor twisted Roman justice beyond reason to produce a death sentence. And again at Golgotha as the anguish of all His wounds at the hands of His tormentors was multiplied by the torture of the act of crucifixion. We could never know the sorrow of His soul as in the darkness, He could experience being forsaken by His God.
Heaven is a place of eternal joys. The table we meet our Lord at today is a foreshadow of that great joy. All because the Lord Jesus bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. – Jim MacIntosh
Here is the link to the video of this message: https://youtu.be/RHxVD2etLGc