When a person’s life approaches the end. Whatever his glory, wealth and splendor of his past would become meaningless, because everything of his past will be cut short immediately. This resembled the passing of my friend whom I knew more than fifty years ago. He held tight the hands of his family when he took his last breath. He did not want to leave his family but he had no choice.
In the book of Lamentations, “My splendor is gone, and all that I had hoped from the Lord”, Jeremiah said. His situation was far different from us. He had preached God’s judgment, and he saw Jerusalem defeated. The splendor was gone because he felt defeated, isolated, and abandoned by God.
But that’s not the end of his story. Light shined through. Jeremiah, burdened and broken, flattened out “I have hope” . His hope comes from realizing that “because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed”. And that is what we need to remember when the splendor is gone: God’s “compassions never fail. They are new every morning” even in our darkest days, God’s great faithfulness shines through. If my friend had received Jesus Christ before he passed that would be a different story.