Lamentations 3:22-23

It is hard to imagine a worse setting for such a beautiful line. Lamentations was written after the destruction of Jerusalem: the temple in ruins, famine, deportation. Chapter 3 opens with "I am the man who has seen affliction" and continues for twenty verses of darkness.

Then, in verse 21, there is an explicit turn: "This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope." Hope is not born from the situation improving; it is born from a deliberate choice to remember.

What is remembered is the essential: his mercies have not ceased, they are new every morning, great is his faithfulness. Notice that the unit of time is the day. No stockpile for the year is promised; daily provision is, like manna in the wilderness.

It is one of the texts most read during long stretches of difficulty — grief, treatment, unemployment — because it shrinks the horizon to a size you can carry: today.