Lamentations 2:6–8 God always has the final word

God is always in control. His ways are beyond our understanding now but will be clearly understood in His presence in His Kingdom.

Our actions have consequences and in salvation and through Holy Spirit He corrects those who place their trust in Him. 

Thank you Jesus for grace that sinners like us can stand in Your righteousness and not in our sin.

John 1:1 (ESV) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

John reminds us Jesus is both man and God. Before He was the son of Mary, He was the Son of the Father. Before He was born on earth, He created the earth (John 1:3). John's Gospel begins by showing us that Jesus has always been with God, and He has no beginning or end. What an amazing Savior!  First 5

Yes, love brings you home.

Or, in the words of Henri Nouwen, “It means a gradual process of coming home to where we belong and listening there to the voice, which desires our attention. Home is the place where that first love dwells and speaks gently to us.”

William Sloane Coffin elaborates, “Of God's love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet and secondly, God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value.  It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.”

Love—the gift of grace—is not something that you even have. Love is something that has you.

It is in our DNA. Sabbath Moments 

Lamentations 2:6–8

6 He has done violence to His tabernacle, As if it were a garden; He has destroyed His place of assembly; The Lord has caused The appointed feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion. In His burning indignation He has spurned the king and the priest. 7 The Lord has spurned His altar, He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has given up the walls of her palaces Into the hand of the enemy. They have made a noise in the house of the Lord As on the day of a set feast.8 The Lord has purposed to destroy The wall of the daughter of Zion. He has stretched out a line; He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying; Therefore He has caused the rampart and wall to lament; They languished together. The New King James Version

His dwelling place is a metaphor for the temple. Zion is another name for Jerusalem. 

Regular religious observances have been neglected. Yahweh has abandoned both royal and religious institutions. Yahweh has rejected His dwelling because of Israel’s idolatry. He measured with a line is used in both construction and demolition and here as a metaphor for judgment. Faithlife Study Bible

Tabernacle means “booth” or “hut,” a structure found in a garden. The point seems to be that the glorious temple of God had become similar to the dilapidated house of David (Amos 9:11). The temple of God had become a booth of branches similar to those used for the Feast of Booths. Four weeks after the capture of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the temple, the palace, the homes of the people, and the city wall. The NKJV Study Bible

A sad representation is here made of the state of God’s church, of Jacob and Israel; but the notice seems mostly to refer to the hand of the Lord in their calamities. Yet God is not an enemy to his people, when he is angry with them and corrects them. And gates and bars stand in no stead when God withdraws his protection. It is just with God to cast down those by judgments, who debase themselves by sin; and to deprive those of the benefit and comfort of sabbaths and ordinances, who have not duly valued nor observed them. What should they do with Bibles, who make no improvement of them? Those who misuse God’s prophets, justly lose them. It becomes necessary, though painful, to turn the thoughts of the afflicted to the hand of God lifted up against them, and to their sins as the source of their miseries. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary

Psalm 74:4 

Your enemies roar in the midst of Your meeting place;

They set up their banners for signs.

Psalm 74:8 

They said in their hearts,“Let us destroy them altogether.

”They have burned up all the meeting places of God in the land.

Zephaniah 3:18 

“I will gather those who sorrow over the appointed assembly,

Who are among you,

To whom its reproach is a burden.