Lamentations 3:40-51 :

Let us search and try our ways,
and turn again to Yahweh.
Let’s lift up our heart with our hands to God in the heavens.
“We have transgressed and have rebelled.
You have not pardoned.

“You have covered us with anger and pursued us.
You have killed.
You have not pitied.
You have covered yourself with a cloud,
so that no prayer can pass through.
You have made us an off-scouring and refuse
in the middle of the peoples.

“All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.
Terror and the pit have come on us,
devastation and destruction.”

My eye runs down with streams of water,
for the destruction of the daughter of my people.
My eye pours down
and doesn’t cease,
without any intermission,
until Yahweh looks down,
and sees from heaven.
My eye affects my soul,
because of all the daughters of my city.

It appears that, at this point, Jeremiah realizes that the only right thing for Israel to do is to take a good look at their ways and come clean before God about the reality that they have sinned. The problem is that it doesn’t appear that God is forgiving them right now, so Jeremiah is in torment. He knows that they should be admitting that they are wrong, but he feels as if God isn’t listening to them. His people are still getting devastated by His anger.

Do I believe that God isn’t really seeing the confession of His people? No, I believe God was seeing it. I don’t believe that just because Jeremiah wrote about waiting until God happens to notice their confession, that God hadn’t noticed. I think that this is just evidence that this as an honest lamentation. It’s not a record of truth about God’s behavior. It’s an honest record of man’s emotions about the torment of God’s punishment. It’s man’s feelings about what God might be doing right now, even though He wasn’t. This should be comforting to us.

God expects us to be honest with Him about our feelings, even when they are wrong! Have you ever considered the fact that God already knows what you are feeling before you express it? Just because you don’t express your feelings to God, doesn’t mean that He can’t see exactly how silly they are right now. These lamentations are yet another evidence that God wants us to pour out the truth about what we feel to Him, even when we are wrong. God is a real person and He cares more than any other person we know. He wants our emotions even though they are imperfect. If you think about it, this makes sense. If we want our emotions to improve, we must bring them, as imperfect as they are, to God so that He can change them. God is able to deal with our wrong feelings and help us walk back into the light.