Sunday, November 1, 2026 | Lamentations 3:22–24 (WEB)
"It is because of the LORD's loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don't fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. 'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul. 'Therefore I will hope in him.'" (Lamentations 3:22–24)
Many of us know these words from the hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." We sing them in bright sanctuaries on good Sunday mornings. But they were first written in a very different place: in the rubble of Jerusalem, after the city had been conquered, the temple burned, and its people carried into exile. Lamentations is a book of grief. And right in the middle of it, this light breaks through.
Hope that doesn't skip the night
The verses just before our passage are some of the darkest in the Bible. The writer says, "You have removed my soul far away from peace. I forgot prosperity. I said, 'My strength has perished, along with my expectation from the LORD'" (Lamentations 3:17–18).
He doesn't pretend. He doesn't rush to the happy part. He tells God exactly how bad it is. Then comes the turn: "This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope" (Lamentations 3:21).
Notice that nothing outside him has changed yet. The city is still in ruins. What changes is what he chooses to remember. Hope begins not when the circumstances improve, but when we call to mind who God is.
A poem built with care
Here's something you can't see in an English Bible. The first four chapters of Lamentations are acrostic poems, arranged by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 is the most intricate of all. It has sixty-six verses, and each of the twenty-two Hebrew letters begins three verses in a row.
Why does that matter? Because grief tends to feel like chaos. Yet the writer pours his sorrow into a careful, ordered form, from the first letter to the last. Even his lament is offered to God with structure and intention. And the words about new mercies sit near the very center of the book, as if the whole poem is built around them. Pain is real, but it does not get the last word or the central place. God's faithfulness does.
Mercy measured out each morning
"They are new every morning." Israel had seen this before. In the wilderness, God fed his people with manna, and "they gathered it morning by morning, everyone according to his eating" (Exodus 16:21). When some tried to save it overnight, "it bred worms and became foul" (Exodus 16:20).
Yesterday's manna couldn't feed today's hunger. In the same way, God doesn't hand us one big supply of mercy to stockpile for the years ahead. He meets us again each day, with what that day needs. That's not stinginess. It's an invitation to come back to him every morning.
A psalm says it this way: "Weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning" (Psalm 30:5). The night is real. So is the morning.
When the LORD is your portion
"The LORD is my portion," says the writer. That word has a history. When the land of Israel was divided among the tribes, the priests received no territory. God told Aaron, "You shall have no inheritance in their land, neither shall you have any portion among them. I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel" (Numbers 18:20).
Now everyone in Jerusalem has lost their land, their homes, and their security. And the writer reaches for that priestly promise. If everything else is gone, God himself is still his inheritance. Another psalmist found the same: "My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever" (Psalm 73:26).
This doesn't mean our losses don't matter. It means they can't take away the one thing that matters most.
Waiting quietly
The verses right after ours show what this hope looks like in practice: "The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD" (Lamentations 3:25–26). And a little later: "For the Lord will not cast off forever. For though he causes grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses" (Lamentations 3:31–32).
Hope here isn't loud or forced. It's quiet, patient, and steady.
This week
Try this each morning for the next seven days. Before you check your phone, say verse 23 out loud: "They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness." Then name one specific mercy from the day before, however small. A meal, a kind word, a night of sleep.
If you're in a season that feels like ruins, you don't have to pretend otherwise. Tell God the truth, as this writer did. Then call to mind who he is. His mercies haven't run out. Tomorrow morning, they'll be new again.
Go deeper: Study Lamentations 3:22–24 on BibleService
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB), which is in the public domain.