I took a long walk in the countryside near my home last month. It was a dreary day. Overcast. Colorless. Chilly. Lifeless.

I considered the gray day an appropriate metaphor for lives afflicted by cancer, injury and disease, injustice and abuse, theft and destruction, or hatred and rejection. It happened to be Inauguration Day here in America, and I thought the scenery was also aptly representative of our nation’s political and cultural landscape.

It’s been nineteen days since I snapped those photos. Today, I took another look at them, and contemplated the biblical book of Lamentations. Its author is widely considered to be the prophet Jeremiah. In it, Jeremiah is … well, he is lamenting.

He is crying. Grieving. Moaning.

Jeremiah begins the third chapter, “I am the man who has seen affliction.”

He isn’t wrong to grieve — in fact he has good reason to do so. For twenty more verses he mourns the…