⏱ 13 min read

What Does Lamentations 3:22-23 Mean?

You have written the verse on the inside cover of the Bible. The one your mother gave you. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The verse holds when very little else does. You have whispered it through the long week after the miscarriage. You have read it at the table the morning after the worst phone call. You have written it on a sticky note above the kitchen sink on the year the bills were not adding up.

And yet — most modern readers do not know that this verse sits in the middle of the book of weeping. Lamentations. The book that the prophet Jeremiah wrote sitting in the rubble of a destroyed Jerusalem, having watched his city burned, his people taken into captivity, the temple desecrated, the children dead in the streets. The book that says, in the verses just before yours, he hath made my chain heavy. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. … I am the man that hath seen affliction. And then, in the middle of that book, in the middle of the long lamentation, three verses arrive that have held the church for two and a half thousand years.

What does Lamentations 3:22-23 mean — not as a fridge magnet, but as the verse that survived a destroyed city, written by a man who had every reason to abandon the language of mercy, and is now being given to you, sitting in your own smaller rubble, as the older verse that knows what your week has been?

This is the slow reading. Charles Spurgeon, who knew the dark country well and pastored thousands of others through it, returned to this verse over and over in Morning and Evening — the daily devotional that he wrote, in his own dark stretches, for the believer whose mornings were hard. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow reading into a 140-day rhythm if you would like a daily home for the practice. (If the underlying question for you is what does it mean to be saved at all — the salvation that holds in destroyed cities — Wesley on the new birth is the upstream essay this one quietly leans on. If the carrying has been the marriage, how to pray for your husband — 31 prayers for every area of his life is the practical companion. And if the verse has been the morning-routine verse for years and the routine has thinned, how to start your day with God walks the slow rebuilding.)

The verses, set down where they sit

Lamentations is structured as a long set of acrostics — each chapter alphabetic, each verse beginning with the next Hebrew letter. The poet has imposed a rigid form on the grief because the grief, without the form, would not have been bearable. Chapter three is the most ordered of all — three verses for every letter of the alphabet, sixty-six verses in tight pattern, the discipline of the poetic form holding the unbearable contents in place.

And then, in the middle of chapter three, the centre breaks open.

This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.

The structural placement matters. The verses do not arrive at the start of the book, when the prophet might be summoning courage. They do not arrive at the end, when he might be summing up. They arrive in the middle of the middle chapter — at the deepest interior of the lamentation, when the form has been holding the contents the longest and the soul is most exhausted by the holding. The mercies are recalled — this I recall to my mind — not produced fresh. The prophet is at the bottom of the grief, and he reaches back to a truth he has known for a long time, and the recalling itself becomes the hope.

This is what the fridge-magnet version misses. Great is thy faithfulness is not a chirpy line. It is the line a man at the bottom of a destroyed city wrote, when he had every reason not to write it, by recalling to mind a truth older than his grief. The verse is load-bearing because it was written in load. The strength of it is not the cheer of the wording. The strength of it is the place from which the wording arrived.

The first passage worth keeping near the page

Spurgeon, in Morning and Evening, named the kind of morning the verse is actually written for. Read this slowly. It is the first of three passages we will sit with.

“Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth! O that he would walk with me; I am ready to give up my whole heart and mind to him, and every other thought is hushed. I am only asking what he delights to give. I am sure that he will condescend to have fellowship with me, for he has given me his Holy Spirit to abide with me forever. Sweet is the cool twilight, when every star seems like the eye of heaven, and the cool wind is as the breath of celestial love.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

Read it again, more slowly. Notice the small posture of the passage.

Spurgeon is waiting. He is not in the middle of a triumphant praise. He is in the cool twilight, ready — I am ready to give up my whole heart and mind to him — but the giving has not yet been answered with a great rush. The mercies of Lamentations 3 arrive precisely to a soul in this kind of waiting. Not to the soul that has already produced the praise. To the soul that is positioned, ready, hushed, with every other thought quieted, asking only what He delights to give.

This is the morning posture the verse is actually written for. Not the morning when you spring out of bed with a verse on your lips. The morning when you wake into the rubble of yesterday, and you sit at the kitchen table, and you let the rest of the noise quiet down, and you wait. The mercies are new every morning — but they are new for the soul that has come into the morning in the posture Spurgeon names. Hushed. Ready. Asking only what He delights to give.

The line worth keeping near the page is the one that quiets the deepest fear of the carrying soul: I am only asking what he delights to give. The believer in the long grief has often been afraid that her requests are presumptuous. That the morning’s small ask — for the strength to get through today, for one moment of His nearness, for the bills to come right — is too much. Spurgeon, with the gentleness of a man who had himself been in the rubble more times than his sermons admitted, names that the asking is not presumption. He delights to give. The mercies are not stingy. The compassions are not rationed. The faithfulness is not measured against the believer’s worthiness on the morning. The mercies are new every morning because His delight in giving them is what mornings are, in the deeper layer of the world, for.

The second passage — what the morning’s grace actually looks like

The second passage is from Morning and Evening. Read it once at speed. Then slowly.

“He is so prolific of grace, that like the sun which shines as it rolls onward in its orbit, his path is radiant with lovingkindness. He is a swift arrow of love, which not only reaches its ordained target, but perfumes the air through which it flies. Virtue is evermore going out of Jesus, as sweet odours exhale from flowers; and it always will be emanating from him, as water from a sparkling fountain. What delightful encouragement this truth affords us! If our Lord is so ready to heal the sick and bless the needy, then, my soul, be not thou slow to put thyself in his way, that he may smile on thee.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

Notice the four small pictures.

The sun rolling onward in its orbit, with the path radiant with lovingkindness. The mercies are not occasional. They are the path itself of the sun. Every morning the sun rises. Every morning the path is radiant. The lovingkindness is the steady thing the world rolls inside.

The swift arrow of love, which perfumes the air through which it flies. The mercies do not only reach the believer. They scent the air they pass through. The whole atmosphere of the morning is mercied, whether the believer registers it or not.

The sweet odours exhaling from flowers. The mercies are exhaled. They are what He breathes out into the day. The mornings are not neutral and then mercied by special intervention. The mornings are mercied at the source.

The water from a sparkling fountain. Constant. Renewing. Not depending on the believer’s pumping. Just there, sparkling, where it has always been.

This is what new every morning means in Spurgeon’s reading. Not new in the sense of just-invented-today. New in the sense of fresh and undiminished at sunrise, the way the sun is new every morning even though it has been the same sun since creation. The mercies have been there. The faithfulness has been there. What is new each morning is the fresh delivery of the same abiding mercies into the day the believer is about to walk.

The line worth keeping near the page is the last clause: be not thou slow to put thyself in his way, that he may smile on thee. Spurgeon, with his pastoral exactness, names that the only labour left to the carrying believer is the small daily putting of herself in His way. The mercies are going out. The sun is rolling. The arrow is flying. The flowers are exhaling. The fountain is sparkling. The believer’s one labour is to be in the room when the morning’s delivery arrives, and the being-in-the-room is the small daily practice that the Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is built to hold across a 140-day rhythm.

The body inside the verse

Pause here. The verse has a body to it, and mercies new every morning lands differently when the body is awake enough to receive them.

Sit somewhere quiet, ideally near a window where the morning light is reaching the room. Both hands resting loosely in your lap. Take one slow inhale through the nose, and as the breath comes in, let your shoulders, which have been carrying yesterday, drop by a small amount. Not by trying to relax them. By stopping the small ongoing effort to hold them up.

Take a second slow inhale. As the breath enters, imagine — gently, do not strain — that the breath is the cool wind Spurgeon described, the breath of celestial love, arriving into your chest as the morning’s specific delivery. On the exhale, let yesterday’s carrying leave the body the way the breath leaves — slowly, without force, going all the way out. Yesterday’s mercies have done their work. Today’s are arriving.

Take one more slow inhale. His mercies are new this morning. Let the body be the first part of you that receives the new ones. The chest opens. The shoulders lower. The breath finishes its exhale. The body knows how to receive a morning that has not yet been spoiled by carrying.

Continue when you are ready.

A small word about the journal that holds this practice

If the slow reading you are doing right now has the feel of something you would like to keep doing — not just once but as a steady morning rhythm — the Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women walks this kind of reading at one short page per evening for 140 days. A passage pre-printed. A small Spurgeon-style gloss in plain English. Space for one honest sentence at the end. Built for the carrying believer whose mornings are looking for a slow structure to receive the freshly-delivered mercies the day is bringing.

The workbook is not the cure for the carrying. The faithfulness is. The workbook is the daily small structure that puts the believer in the room when the morning’s mercies arrive.

The third passage — the mercies meditated upon

The third passage is from Till He Come. Read it once. Then slowly.

“I was sitting, the other night, meditating on God’s mercy and love, when suddenly I found in my own heart a most delightful sense of perfect peace.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Till He Come

The verb is the one to underline. Meditating. The carrying believer who reads Lamentations 3:22-23 once and moves on into the day’s labour is reading the verse but not yet meditating on it. Spurgeon, who knew the difference, names what meditation does.

He sat. He held the truth — God’s mercy and love — slowly in his attention. He did not strive for a feeling. He did not perform devotion. He sat with the mercy and the love in front of his attention long enough for the suddenly to arrive. A most delightful sense of perfect peace. The verse does its work when it has been meditated upon, not when it has been merely read. The fridge-magnet use of the verse is a one-second exposure. The meditative use is a fifteen-minute sitting, with the verse in front of the attention, and the soul slowly catching the mercy the verse has been holding for it.

The line worth keeping near the page is the smallest one: suddenly I found in my own heart. The peace is not produced by Spurgeon. He finds it. The mercies of Lamentations 3 are not generated by the believer’s striving. They are found, by a believer who has put herself in their way through the slow practice of meditating on them.

This is what Lamentations 3:22-23 means at the deepest layer. Not a verse to be quoted on a hard morning and then forgotten by ten o’clock. The slow daily mercied morning, meditated upon, until the suddenly arrives — until the peace, which has been there in the morning’s fresh delivery the whole time, is finally found in your own heart. The mercies are new every morning. The finding is the slow work of meditation. The faithfulness is the One who has been waiting to be found.

What this looks like over a year of slowly-walked mornings

A year of slowly-walked mornings through Lamentations 3:22-23 will not end the carrying on a schedule. The grief has its own slow tide. The bills come right when they come right. The phone call’s aftermath takes the years it takes. What the year of slow mornings will do is teach the body and the soul to be in the room when the day’s mercies arrive. The morning becomes the room. The kitchen table becomes the chair. The five minutes with the verse become the small daily putting-of-yourself-in-His-way that Spurgeon described.

By the end of the year, the verse will read differently. Not because Jeremiah’s words have changed. Because you will have become the carrying believer who knows how to receive a mercied morning — and the new every morning will have stopped being a slogan and become the actual rhythm by which your days are now arriving into your hands. The carrying will still be carrying. The mercies will still be new. The faithfulness will still be great. And the body that has been bracing through yesterday will have learned, by daily quiet practice, how to lower itself into the morning the way the prophet lowered himself, in the rubble, into the verse that held him.

(The sibling essays in this verse-by-verse series sit at what Hebrews 11:1 means — Owen on the substance of things hoped for and what Psalm 42 means — Spurgeon on the deer panting. Same slow reading, across other load-bearing passages.)

That is what Lamentations 3:22-23 actually means. Not a fridge magnet. The verse in the middle of the book of weeping, written by a man at the bottom of a destroyed city, recalling to his own soul a truth older than his grief — and now given to you, in your own smaller rubble, as the morning verse that knows what your week has been and stands faithfully in the room when you arrive.

☕ Get Seven Days of Stillness — free

A free gift from Hayley Louisa Mark. A short devotional companion drawn from the 140-Day series — seven passages, seven contemplative practices, sent to your inbox over the coming week.

Send me the seven days →

No noise. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you wish.

A daily home for the practice

The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each evening, a short passage and room for the honest sentence — the small daily anchor that keeps the carrying soul in the room when the morning’s mercies arrive.

---

The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Spurgeon’s slow vocabulary — mercies new every morning, the path radiant with lovingkindness, the breath of celestial love — into a daily companion built for the carrying believer whose mornings are ready to be received again.