"But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."
Devotion
Go deeper
"The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases"
The Love That Outlasts · chesed · H2617 · HEBREW
Steadfast love, lovingkindness, covenant faithfulness — a love so bound by covenant that it cannot be revoked even when everything else falls apart
These words were written by someone sitting in the smoking ruins of Jerusalem — not someone who had made it to the other side of suffering. Lamentations is a book of grief, not resolution. And yet from inside that grief, the writer reaches for the one thing he can still assert. Chesed — the covenant love of God — cannot cease, not because circumstances have improved, but because it is anchored to who God is, not to what is happening.
📖 Job 1–2; 38–40 · The Man Who Got Honest with GodJob lost everything in rapid succession — his children, his wealth, his health. His friends arrived and offered what seemed like reasonable theology: surely you sinned; God is just; repent and things will turn around. Job's own wife told him to curse God and die. Everyone had an explanation. None of them satisfied.
What Job did was remarkable: he refused to offer false comfort to himself. He demanded an audience with God. He brought his confusion, his grief, and his unanswered questions directly to the one who hadn't answered. He didn't pretend the silence was peace.
God never answered Job's why. When he finally spoke from the whirlwind in Job 38, he answered with questions of his own about the vastness of creation — not because he was being evasive, but because the real answer to Job's suffering was not an explanation. It was an encounter. Job saw God, and it was enough.
"his mercies never come to an end"
Mercy from the Womb · racham · H7356 · HEBREW
Compassion, deep tender mercy; from the root word for womb — a love like a mother's for her child, visceral and instinctive
The word racham connects mercy to the most instinctive, physical love we know — a mother's care for the child she carried. God's mercies toward you are not procedural or cautious — they are womb-deep, instinctive, constitutive of who he is. And they don't run out. In a season where everything else seems to be running out — energy, hope, explanations — mercy has no bottom.
📖 Lamentations 3:1–33 · The Man Who Found Mercy in the RuinsThe writer of Lamentations doesn't pretend to be okay. The first two and a half chapters of chapter 3 alone are a catalogue of suffering: driven into darkness, skin wasting away, chains heavy, prayers shut out, hopes gone. He says God himself is the source of his affliction. This is not a faith that papers over pain.
And then, in verse 21, there is a pivot so sharp it feels like a gear change: "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope." Something shifts. Not in his circumstances — Jerusalem is still in ruins. But in his orientation. He deliberately calls something to mind.
What he calls to mind is not a promised outcome. It is a characteristic of God: mercies that don't end, steadfast love that doesn't cease, faithfulness that is great. He leans his weight on who God is when what God has done doesn't make sense yet.
"they are new every morning"
The Freshness That Returns · chadash · H2319 · HEBREW
New, fresh, renewed; the same root used for a new thing, a fresh beginning — what was used up is replaced, not just continued
In Hebrew thought, "new every morning" is not just repetition — chadash suggests genuine freshness, not the same thing warmed up. Every morning God offers mercy that hasn't been used before — mercy that is specific to today's grief, today's confusion, today's exhaustion. Yesterday's mercy served yesterday. This morning's is already here.
📖 Exodus 16:1–21 · The Bread That Didn't KeepIsrael was in the wilderness — a place of unanswered questions and unresolved circumstances. They were hungry and they complained, and God responded with manna: bread from heaven, appearing on the ground each morning with the dew.
The instructions were specific: gather enough for today. Do not try to store it for tomorrow. When some tried to keep it overnight, it rotted. Except on the day before the Sabbath, when a double portion was given that kept perfectly — because God was teaching something about rest as well as dependence.
The daily provision was a daily invitation: trust me for today. God was not being stingy. He was training them to relate to him as a God of daily nearness, not occasional abundance. Each morning's provision was a fresh declaration: I am still here, and I am still providing.
Declarations
- ✦ The steadfast love of God never ceases — it holds in my unanswered grief. (Lamentations 3:22)
- ✦ God's mercies are new this morning — fresh grace for today's specific pain. (Lamentations 3:23)
- ✦ Nothing I am losing or have lost can separate me from the love of God. (Romans 8:39)
- ✦ My inner self is being renewed day by day, even when my circumstances are not. (2 Corinthians 4:16)
Prayer
Father, I don't have the explanation I thought I needed, and I'm learning to lay that down. What I need more than an answer is your presence — and you've promised that. Meet me in this grief that doesn't make sense. Be my steadfast love when I can't feel it. Let your mercies reach me fresh today, even here, even now. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Think about it
What question have you been waiting for God to answer — and what would it mean to trust his character while you wait for the resolution?
I will receive today's mercy for today's grief, and trust God with what I cannot yet understand.
Open my personal devotional →Want daily reminders on your phone? Get the Witness Health app.