The Book of Lamentations is an acrostic (i.e., alphabetical) poem that begins with the Hebrew letter Aleph (א) in the word “eichah” (אֵיכָה), which also marks the Hebrew name of the book (מגילת איכה). “How (eichah) lonely sits the city that once was full of people!” (Lam. 1:1). The sages note that this word “how” (i.e., eichah) could also be read as “where are you?” (i.e., ayeka: אַיֶּכָּה), God’s first word spoken to Adam after he broke covenant in the Garden (Gen. 3:9). Note that God’s question is often our own: “Where are you God? Are you here, in the midst of this tedious moment? Do you know my loneliness, my ache for love? Do you understand the troubles of my heart? Do you know my pain?” And yet how many people have faith that God’s call is one of comfort and restoration? God uses our loneliness (“how lonely…”) to search our hearts, asking each of us, ayeka – “Where are you?” “Why have you turned away from me and chosen a state of exile?” Our haunting sense of God’s absence impels us to seek for him… God awaits our only possible response, “Hashivenu!” — an imperative (urgent appeal) for the grace to repent: “Turn us back to yourself, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old” (Lam. 5:21).
Hebrew Lesson:
Our response to the questioning love of the LORD is called teshuvah (“turning [shuv] to God”). Teshuvah is an “answer” to a shelah, or a question. God’s love for us is the question, and our teshuvah – our turning of the heart toward Him – is the answer. As Jeremiah confessed in the hour of great trouble: “I called upon your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; You heard my voice: hide not your ear at my breathing, at my cry. You came near when I called upon you; you said, ‘Do not be afraid.’” (Lam. 3:55-57).
Sometimes we seem to forget that we are not home yet… The ancient thinker Socrates argued that philosophy, when done correctly, was “practice for death,” since the passing shadows of this world pointed to an unchanging good, our true end. Likewise Yeshua our Messiah taught us to take up the cross and die daily (Luke 9:23). We are to “set our affections on things above, not on things on the earth,” for we have died and our life is hidden with Messiah in God (Col. 3:2-3).
Our Torah this week (i.e., 
“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will seek to enter but will not be able” (Luke 13:24). The narrow door is the way of humility, assuming a low position, crawling, if you will, and making yourself small… It is the way of the cross of Messiah, confessing the truth of our condition and trusting in God alone for deliverance.. The narrow door is the way of faith – trusting God’s compassion and righteousness given on your behalf. The large, wide-open door is designed for the crowd and its various idols. Beware of the world that seeks to assimilate the soul: beware of becoming part of the crowd! The individual is lost and overwhelmed in the midst of the crowd and its momentum. The crowd assimilates the soul, laughs at the notion of individual responsibility, and abandons itself to the gravity of fallen natural forces… The life of faith, on the other hand, refuses to regard the individual human heart as a triviality. Faith is an individual struggle, a walk into unknowing; it is the way of the sojourner who feels uneasy in this world of shadows… God is always with us and helps us stay strong and resolute, even as we struggle through the darkness of this age. Press on, friend: the day and the hour draw near!
“We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). This is true for all people, since every soul lives by faith of some kind or another. Our Torah portion this week (Shelach) begins with the episode of the spies and concludes with the warning not to “spy after your heart and after your eyes” (Num. 15:39). The Torah mentions the heart first and then the eyes to indicate that the eyes follow the heart. We see as we believe with our heart: “According to your faith be it done unto you.” When the spies said, “We are not able to go up (לא נוּכל לעלות)… for they are stronger than us” (Num. 13:31), they revealed their unwillingness to believe in God’s promise, or, to put it another way, they revealed their faith in God’s inability to deliver on his word…. Indeed, the Hebrew word for “than us” (i.e, ממנו) can also mean “than Him,” suggesting that the spies believed that even God would be unable to uproot the Canaanites! According to their faith, so it was done; by believing that it was impossible, they lost the possibility of God’s promise…
Because we are in the midst of a raging spiritual war, it is imperative to gird your mind and heart with truth… Keep yourself armed for the battle and be aware of the common strategies of the enemy of your soul (2 Cor. 2:11). Trust in God’s power to deliver you from evil (1 Cor. 10:13). Be resolute in your convictions, refusing to yield to worldly pressures to compromise your faith in the name of supposed “tolerance.” It is not loving to suppress the truth of Yeshua or to minimize the truth claims of our Messiah’s vision of reality. Fight the good fight of faith, and take hold of those spiritual weapons that are “mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). Always be ready to yield every thought to the obedience of your LORD (2 Cor. 10:4). Know that this is the fight for your life, friend. The Prince of Peace (שַׂר־שָׁלוֹם) came to make peace between God and sinners through his sacrificial blood, but he did so by means of a terrible conflict with the powers of darkness, and his message still offends those enslaved by pride and fear… The devil provides weapons for those in his service, namely voilence, the lies of darkness, the impudence of pride, and the vain seductions of this world, and therefore it behooves us to avail ourselves of the weapons of faith received by the agency of the Spirit of God (Eph. 6:11-18). Be sober and vigilant because your adversary (ἀντίδικος) the devil prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world” (1 Pet. 5:7-8). Yield yourself to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7). The end of all things draws near: be awake; call upon the Name of the LORD….
It has been said that grace is getting what you don’t deserve, whereas mercy is not getting what you do… Yeshua said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matt. 5:7). This is not a reciprocal law like karma, i.e., you get in return what you first give, since we cannot obtain God’s mercy as reward for our own supposed merit (Rom. 4:4). No, we are able to extend mercy to others when we are made merciful (“full of mercy”), that is, when we first receive mercy from God. After all, you can’t give away what you don’t have, and if we have no mercy for others, it is likely that we have not received it ourselves, as the parable of the Good Samaritan reveals (Luke 10:25-8). Your forgiveness is your forgiveness: as you forgive, so you reveal your heart. What you do comes from what you are, not the other way around… We are first transformed by God’s grace and then come works of love. We are able to judge others mercifully, with the “good eye,” because we come to believe that we are beloved by God.
“God chose you… from among all peoples” (Deut. 10:15). The idea is repeated several times in Torah (for example, see Deut. 14:2; Exod. 19:5-6; Deut. 7:7-8; Amos 3:2). What a great blessing to be personally selected by God to know his love and forgiveness; what a privilege to be made an heir of the covenant and promises of the LORD! Spiritually understood, being chosen is not the result of simply being born Jewish, but has to do with being in a relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the truth, and therefore Gentiles who trust in God are justified by their faith and chosen as His people. As it is written: “In the Messiah we too have been claimed as God’s own possession, since we were predestined according to the one purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11). What an honor, what a mercy, what a joy!
Many people are anxious about dying, though it would profit them more to be anxious about living well instead. Indeed the best reason to think about death (memento mori) is to think about the value of life (memento vivere). Likewise many people are anxious over the prophesied “End of Days,” though it would profit them more to be anxious about walking their present day in the Presence of the Lord (Psalm 16:8).
As followers of Yeshua, we must be “theocratic” in our focus, as our Lord himself was. He taught us to pray: “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10); he instructed us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:33), and gravely warned that those who practice lawlessness (i.e., ἀνομία) are cut off from the hope of God (Matt. 7:23). Indeed God’s curse is on all those who seek to eat from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” that is, those who define good and evil in their own terms, disregarding the revelation of Torah, and who desire to do only what they think is right “in their own eyes.” In the end, every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess the truth about Reality, friends… That day is coming soon.