Lament - Bemoaning is motivated when pity or grief is over an event that is joined to a consequence, whereas lamenting is motivated when the grief is over the event itself.
Interesting the difference….I bemoan the fact that I watched the Forest Gump movie , and when he became a zillionaire by buying some Fruit Shares ( Actually meaning Apple Computers Inc) ….I didn’t follow suit…when the shares were $15 …whereas today they are around $600 a share. ..a thousand dollar investment would have become a gain of USD$585,000 !!
But the word Lament is short for one of the saddest books in the Bible… the book of Lamentations. Lamentations describes the funeral of a city. The once proud city of Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians who decimated it around 600 years Before Christ was born….and cast out its inhabitants into exile.
And it features amongst the carnage and destruction …the words of Jeremiah the prophet who wrote the book previous to Lamentations….the words of hope …..Great is your (Gods ) Faithfulness. What would ever make him blurt that out when all around him was death, destruction and decimation. Even the beautiful hymn Great Is Thy Faithfulness is written from this verse. So what brought on this out burst of hope from a man who was highly emotional and was called the weeping prophet?
The book of Jeremiah is one of the wordiest and longest books in all of the Bible and one of the saddest.Here was a man that had worked tirelessly for forty plus years…..only to see the people of Jerusalem become rebellious and defiant against God. He stood up to the civic and religious leaders of the time telling them they were morally bankrupt. By doing so he was persecuted by his fellow countrymen hence his heartache and heartbreaking message.
His book is basically rambling and disjointed.
I must confess there is a little bit of Jeremiah in me. I lament at what is going on in the world today ..I take on personally the heartache, and whereas others would say …Why bother what can you do?
I only need to turn over a few pages and read the next book in the Bible that of Ezekiel….which is broken into three parts….the first of Gods judgement against his wayward people, followed by Gods judgement against the nations and finally Gods renewed blessing on his repentant people,….. to at least get my spirits up again.
It is fascinating to see the parallels of 2nd Chronicles which appears earlier in the Bible but refers to an earlier time of 966 BC. In both times great rulers and Prophets either built up the people to rightfully worship god , or to forewarn of the pending disaster of turning their backs on God and doing their own thing.
I don’t set myself up in the same esteemed company as men like Isaiah, King Solomon or Jeremiah but I do see changes in acceptable values in behaviour of the present generation compared even to my generation . Don’t get me wrong….we didn’t in the 1950′s or 1960′s get it completely right either ….far from it …but the moral decay in many schools has been evident for a while now.
The removal of Bibles In Schools is one example that saddens me as it taught much more than what the truths of the Bible told…it also taught values and learning from past mistakes when mankind has trivulized God.
I look at for example what the ” evils” of school in 1960 was compared to today.
I remember getting wacked( with a bamboo cane around my backside ) for being 2 minutes late to school. Another one for semi riding my bike in school grounds so I could make up the 2 minutes ( Due to a 50kmph head wind) so I wouldn’t receive another wack for being late to assembly. Having your sox down more than 2 inches from your knee cap ( wackable) not completing homework…normally 2 or 3 hours per night ( wackable) or not saying Sir or Madam to all teachers ( possible wacking)….certainly a detention….and if you were made to do it after school, a wack for turning up to sports practice late.
Today in schools the evils are drugs, bullying/beatings ( normally downloaded to UTUBE ) stabbings, suicides and the occasional school shootings/ murder.
I lament that my children and grandchildren cannot enjoy their innocence of youth that I enjoyed. I lament that few children of today are risk takers or strive to achieve the sheer brilliance of being able to create things through the skills of their own hands and the power of their mind.
So much of what is done today is copied , downloaded , and imitated ….the youth of today would be sunk if their cellphones, Ipacs, Ipods etc were taken away , or the power went off for maybe weeks on end.
Few survival skills of the 1960′s are evident today ….maybe old relics like me with forward thinking who see the danger signs are outnumbered and have been quietened …… but I will promise you one thing there is little difference between mankind of yesteryear and today….only the standard of living has changed …not necessarily their brilliance of mind and intellect.
I will write again soon
Lindsay Walker
13th May 2012
