Charles Spurgeon Commentary Lamentations 3:18-21

"And I said, My strength is perished, and mine expectation from Jehovah. Remember mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind; therefore have I hope." — Lamentations 3:18-21 (ASV)

And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.

And as long as your afflictions, poor troubled souls, have really humbled you, you may have hope. Recall to your mind the fact that God's chastising blows have brought you down to his feet in humble submission, and ended all your boastings, and in that you may have hope.

And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.

Notice that, in all his sorrow, this man still had hope. His soul was humbled, and therefore he had hope. I think that, in the New Zealand language, the word for hope is "swimming thought" – the thought that swims when everything else is drowned. Oh, what a mercy it is that hope can live on when everything else appears to die!