In seasons when the news carries so many accounts of harm visited upon the powerless—children in rubble, communities fleeing violence, minorities facing legal persecution, migrants and refugees caught between borders—the ancient voice of Lamentations does not offer escape or denial. It names affliction plainly, holds it in memory, and refuses easy comfort. Yet in the midst of witnessed suffering, the poet discovers not that pain has vanished, but that mercy persists: new each morning, faithful even when faith feels thin. This is not a promise that suffering will cease, but an invitation to notice, in the midst of it, that goodness has not abandoned the earth. To wait for the Lord in such times is to remain alert to his mercies even as we grieve what is lost.