How to Move From Bitter to Better
MEREDITH HOUSTON CARR
Listen to this devotion
“He
has filled me with bitterness; he has sated me with wormwood. He has
made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is
bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is.” Lamentations
3:15-17 (ESV)
I hung up the phone, and that’s when it hit me. A
tangled mix of tears — joy and achiness — ran together, and at a pace
that surprised even my tear-prone self. A precious friend had just told
me of her amazing, miraculous news. After years of infertility, God
opened her womb, and it now danced with new life.
My heart
rejoiced with her happiness — and yet, it seemed as though her joyful
news highlighted the bleak, sparse state of my life: displaced and
lonely after uprooting our family in a cross-country move, working
through grief over a difficult diagnosis for our son, and struggling to
repair old wounds in my marriage that just wouldn’t heal.
As this
dear friend reveled in God’s incredible work in her life, I twisted and
twitched against the itchy circumstances surrounding me. In this
season, I found myself camping out in the book of Lamentations, written
by the ancient prophet Jeremiah. He was a man who knew a thing or two
about enduring seasons of hardships — so much so, he even earned the
nickname “the weeping prophet” (boy, can I relate to that!).
Jeremiah’s words in Lamentations 3:15-17, though ancient, spoke volumes to my modern soul and captured the ache in my heart:
“He
has filled me with bitterness; he has sated me with wormwood. He has
made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is
bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is.”
That word,
“wormwood,” caught my eye. A little online digging revealed it’s a
shrubby plant — la’anah in Hebrew — and most noted for its intense
bitterness. The Greeks used the word absinthion, which means
“undrinkable.”
And just like its unpalatable taste, wormwood
appears frequently in the Bible to symbolize unpalatable bitterness and
sorrow in life. In that season of my own life, I felt much like Jeremiah
— chowing down on a daily diet of wormwood.
Have you ever felt that way?
Maybe
you’re in a season where you, too, find yourself on a steady diet of
wormwood. Everywhere you look, you’re taking in bitterness while it
seems those around you are feasting on filet mignon.
And oh, how
our enemy loves to use our soured, seared taste buds to seduce us into
doubting God’s goodness! With every bitter bite, he tempts us into
thinking our Father has forgotten us, as if we’ve slipped into a place
beyond the reach of His goodness.
But nothing could be further
from the truth! Listen to the words of Jeremiah, written just verses
after lamenting his wormwood diet:
“The steadfast love of the
Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every
morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my
soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him’” (Lamentations 3:22-24, ESV).
Like
Jeremiah, we too can choose to remember and cling to the truth in our
circumstances: God Himself is our portion, even when scrubby wormwood
shrubs line our path. It may feel as if we’re on a wormwood diet, but
God’s faithfulness never ends. He will see us through bitter to better
seasons.
And if “the weeping prophet” could cling to this truth
after all he’d been through, then sweet sister, surely you and I can do
the same!
Dear one, no matter what bitterness permeates your life
right now, the steadfast love of the Lord stands ready to satisfy you.
There is no darkness beyond the reach of His light, no pain too tender
for His touch, and no lonely void His love can’t fill. May we feast on
that love today.
Dear heavenly Father, our weary hearts give You
thanks for being a God who sees and satisfies our needs with good
things. When bitterness surrounds us, grant us strength to turn away
from the enemy’s lies and turn instead to You. May our souls find peace
and rest in You this season. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.