Lamentations, Jeremiah and Chagall
.. Seasons of normalcy to the aberrant - A Sunday Amen
Watching my youngest granddaughter ride her little balance bike around the neighborhood brought up one of my earliest childhood memories.
I marveled at her beautiful life. I prayed it would remain that way. Beautifully normal, if not ordinary. The way it should be. I hoped she would continue to marvel at the squirrels she fed her toast to and the birds chirping in the trees. That the green eyes of “meow meow” would continue to delight her and music would fill her heart.
It was Thursday, December 2nd, 1964. My 4th birthday. New to America, we were renting a small four-plex bungalow apartment on Kester Avenue in Van Nuys, California.
My mom told me to wait outside for dad to come home early. I can still see him across the street, cigarette dangling from his mouth dodging cars, running toward me with a huge box in his arms.
It was my first bike. A pink Royce Union with training wheels.
We eventually bought a small and modest home in Arleta, California. It was a sunny yellow and white house with a white rock roof. During the spring of 1967, when all the jacaranda trees were in full bloom, dad took my training wheels off and pushed me down the sidewalk. To this day I can vividly see my front wheel cutting through the thick path of purple flowers.
Wobbly, I was riding my bike without trainers.
There is a joyful freedom in these childhood moments that’s hard to forget. In a sense you have made a baby step toward independence and away from dependence.
I realize I have been in a long season of lamenting.
Far from childhood days of wonder, my own grief set aside, I have been lamenting about individual suffering in our country and the world. All the whys unanswered.
There are a litany of reasons.
I have expressed in my writing the heavy sadness I feel about our homeless crisis, and specifically the enormity of the mentally ill. How human beings are left to live and die on our streets, in absolute squalor. It is a lament that begins and ends, like so many laments and injustices of the day, with a headline.
I lament the children, before the world brings them down, the young adults, so hopeless, so void of conscious they tear down, rather than lift up, destroying in mob mentality.
I realize that lamenting is a season of weeping and conversations with God, much like the prophet and poet, Jeremiah, had with God. My life verse has always been Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
He does know the plans. Although it can be very painful, he will give you a hope and a future if you listen. If you follow the purple path.
In God’s second and even longer exile of the Israelites, as if wandering in the desert for 40 years in search of the Promised Land wasn’t a good enough lesson, He calls Jeremiah to warn them of His impending wrath for their disobedience again to Him. For turning away from the law and calling on idols in every aspect of their lives.
This time God tells Jeremiah not to pray for them. The reason being is God saw how the people thought they could do anything they wanted and they would always be protected. He told Jeremiah that things could not remain the same and that He would take care of it.
The wrath that came against them began with the wicked and deceitful King of Judah, who had lead his people astray. They had done more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.
The King of Judah had also refused to pay taxes to Babylon for three years. As a result, Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians, who declared war on Judah. The Jewish people were forcefully removed from their homeland, and taken to Babylon in captivity.
Although Jeremiah never stopped preaching to the Jewish people in Babylon, relentlessly asking them not to fight, but to turn back to God, despite how brutally hard it was for him, the mocking he received, and the terrible destruction he saw of his people, his responsibility does not lead to forfeiture of being but rather to fulfillment of life.
The pain and anguish Jeremiah felt, trying to save his people, gave him the name, The Weeping Prophet. Although God had appointed Him to a higher calling after his own heart for God, it often angered him that God did not listen to him, yet Jeremiah never gave up on his people.
Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal, July 6th 1887 in the small village of Liozna, near Vitebsk (now Belarus), Russian Empire. He passed away at the age of 97 in his adopted homeland of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.
During his time in Vitebsk prior to World War I he travelled between Saint Petersburg, Paris and Berlin making a name for himself as a modern artist, drawing and painting Eastern European and Jewish folk culture scenes. He had later worked in Moscow in very difficult conditions in a tough time in Russia, before leaving for Paris again in 1923.
During World War II, he escaped occupied France to the United States, where he lived for 7 years in New York City before returning to France in 1948.
Chagall was proudly Jewish and when he was finally able to acknowledge his religious background it was because he had left his homeland of Russia for good to settle in France where he felt safer. In his early years he had witnessed violence and persistent condemnation toward members of his community.
Some of his finest paintings and drawings were made during this time in Paris and are of Biblical themes.
Lamentations of Jeremiah remind us that Marc Chagall himself saw the brutality of those who went against God to serve themselves and the tortured responsibility of the prophet. In Moses, receiving the first tablets I see an awe and a hope of the people, families with babies ready to receive God’s instructions. Reminders of what we are capable of, until we’re not.
Art critic Robert Hughes called Marc Chagall “the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century.” He experienced Modernism, the “golden age,” in Paris and blended many other art forms, yet remained most vigorous a Jewish artist, representing one long daydream of life in his home village of Vitebsk.
He lived 97 years, pushing through the affliction of his people in Russia, exploring and learning art at all costs, surrounded by and escaping wrath, the loss of a young wife, and yet fulfilled God’s purpose for his life. His mediums included painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.
Many might interpret Chagall’s work as wholly whimsical and nothing more, yet to me, he left a visual love story of the beautiful simplicity of God’s people behind in every image.
Jeremiah, in turn represented the principles of truth, justice, purity, love to God and love to man.
It is no coincidence that I just found my wedding invitation with Chagall’s beautiful depiction of a husband and wife. It was for the purpose of exploring Chagall’s work more thoroughly, which in turn lead me to read Lamentations.
We are in times of great lament. It’s hard to live in the world and witness long seasons deviate from the normal to the aberrant, yet we can honor God by living out our purpose, checking our own character and taking everything to prayer and thanksgiving.
I will end with church today. It was all about “The Power of Simple Prayer.”
Dear Father…
You are good.
I need help.
They need help.
Thank you.
In Jesus name, amen.
We cannot change what has gone but it is never too late to lament and try to amend. God is always there to listen.
Bless you, Deb 🙏💜🙏