What Isaiah and Jeremiah want you to know is - the worst thing in your day, your week, your month or even the worst thing in your entire life is not the last thing. Did you get that? Like daughter Zion, we can be tempted to give up - to think we've been forgotten - if we were ever remembered in the first place. Like her, we might even write "it looks like...you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure" in our diary, and then lay down our pen and close the book.

Fortunately our story does not end with our sin or hurts or pains or losses. God will not allow those things to be the final words of our life. Psalm 139 says, "your eyes, O God, saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Some people think that means we have no freedom or choice in our lives - God is pulling the strings and we're just puppets. But if that were true - why would God let us sin in the first place? One of the hallmarks of Lutheran theology is Eternal Foreknowledge. God knows what we are going to say and do - and He lets us choose for or against Him, for or against our world, for our against us - but always places within our grasp everything we need to know He is still here - still loves us - and won't give up on us. Divine love always conquers divine justice because of the cross and empty tomb.