Our cities

Lamentations 1:1-2 How she sits alone, the city [once] crowded with people! She who was great among the nations has become like a widow. The princess among the provinces has become a slave. She weeps aloud during the night, with tears on her cheeks. There is no one to offer her comfort, [not one] from all her lovers. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

This is undoubtedly about Zion (Jerusalem) after she was sacked and ravaged by the Babylonian army; but it also sounds like so many of our own cities which were once prosperous, but now find themselves infested with blight.

In these ending days the residents of our once vibrant cities have not been exiled to prison camps, but have become captive to prisons of economic downturn and the behavior of the hopeless: substance abuse, relational chaos, homelessness, joblessness, mental illness, incarceration, prostitution, etc. The list is seemingly endless.

My own town is now desolate, though efforts are being made to revitalize the downtown; the steel foundry is a fraction of its original size; heroin addiction is rampant, and we often feel like we are our own worst enemies. This is the lament of the current age ...