Desolation and compassion

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Our texts du jour include passages from Lamentations and Habakkuk that lament or anticipate the desolation of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. What’s it like when calamity or God’s judgment leaves the land, the houses or the people desolate?

To see what it’s like, preachers could wander through Detroit, or some of the emptied-out towns on the American prairie. They could then report on desolation from their own experience.