Hello Again!!!
This was written and first used for the service I did on Oct. 3, 2004 at the Lynnville (IL) UMC, and when I chanced across it, I deemed it Very suitable to use again down here on Oct. 12, 2008 at the Hartford East Maple Street Chapel. ! I think you’ll see why as you read it!

Steve

Lamentations 1: 1-6

How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.

Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations; she finds no resting place. All who pursue her have overtaken her in the midst of her distress.

The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish.

Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. The LORD has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe.

All the splendor has departed from the Daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; in weakness they have fled before the pursuer.

Illinois State Fair

I don’t remember exactly how many times my family went to the Illinois State Fair when I was growing up, but it was certainly more that once. Living as we did, though, here close to St. Louis, the drive to Springfield was not something to be taken lightly… indeed, it involved much forethought and planning. So I guess that’s why it seems that each trip we did make was usually with one group of relatives or another, and became quite the family outing!

One of the trips that really stands out in my memory was the year that they advertised that a mile-long line of farm machinery was to be on display. And what I remember most about that was the Allis-Chalmers exhibit. As best I remember, Allis had built what they called the largest bulldozer ever made… and it may well have been at that time. It was so large that only two had been built to that point. One had been shipped to Saudi Arabia or one of those Middle Eastern countries, while the other had been driven from the plant on the south side of Springfield to the fairgrounds and was on display. The plaque mounted on it told of how they had taken railroad ties and laid them all the way along Sixth Street to get it there, picking them up from behind and putting them back in front… it took all of one night, and the entire road had to be closed during the move… it was that big! There was one set of stairs built going up along the track on one side with a walkway built over the track leading to the operator’s platform, and another walkway and set of steps leading off and down the other side, and there was a long line of people waiting their turn to climb up and walk across that platform just to look at the controls and wonder how the operator would ever be able to see what he was actually doing!

Oh! I almost forgot the best part! Sitting on the hood… right between the exhaust pipe and the air-cleaner… was a brand new Allis-Chalmers garden tractor with a ‘dozer blade mounted of the front of it! The signs noted that the two units represented the largest and smallest bulldozers ‘in the world!’ Whether that were actually the case or not, that image will forever be burned into my memory!

Aside from that, these trips were infrequent enough that I never lost that feeling of ‘magic’ that always seemed to come over me when we were there, and what I came away with, when all was said and done, was really just a montage of rides, vendors, cows and horses, and people… Lots and lots… and lots… of people! I think it fair to say that it was always wall-to-wall people!

And that was part of the magic of it… part of what made it alive and vibrant! It was all of those colorful people coming together… vendors hawking their Cheese-on-a-stick or lemon-shake-ups… salesmen lifting bowling balls with their vacuum cleaners… ‘carneys’ and street sweepers… and the masses of people there to show their animals and sweet corn and quilts, as well as those of us there to watch them show their animals and marvel at their sweet corn and ooh-and-aah at their quilts! People and people and more people! I would have to say that that has always been one of my most vibrant memories of the state fair, even today… all of the people!

I believe that it was the latter part of 1983 when I went to work for the Case dealer that used to be on the north side of Springfield, across from the airport. They had been a dealer since the 1920’s, and still had a fairly large customer base, with a very large number of Case tractors to service all around that area. And one of their oldest customers kept a small fleet of Case utility tractors at the fairgrounds to clean out stalls and load manure and such things on a yearly contract. And of course, it was only a matter of time before I got to make my first service call on one of them.

Driving up to the main gates in the service truck, I found them open and nobody around! I drove in cautiously, looking all around for any signs of life… Indeed, I couldn’t bring myself to drive any faster than I could walk along that road, since that was the only way I had ever traveled down it before! Slowly, I made my way to the cattle barns where I had been told the tractor was, continuously staring around me at all of the emptiness! No vendor’s trailers… no elephant ears… no radio or TV stations doing live broadcasts… no nothing! And mainly… no people!! Since my only memory of it was of wall-to-wall crowds… people of all types and sizes and shapes doing all kinds of different and exciting things… all of this emptiness really kinda’ spooked me! Spooked? That was it… it seemed more like a ghost town!

I remembered seeing a real ghost town, once, on one of our family vacation trips out to California. This, though, was no rotting pile of wood buildings… from the highway you could see a small city on the side of the mountain we were coming down… a city of large brick buildings and factories, not just wood houses! And yet, it was so obvious from all of the broken windows and general neglect that it was deserted… all of the people were gone! It had been a silver mining town, and apparently a very successful one! But when the silver ran out, the town died and the people just up and left! It was spooky! That was the same feeling I got being at the fairgrounds with nobody around… and it describes the mood that Jeremiah was describing in the first of these verses! ‘How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.’

The Wycliffe Bible Commentary tells us that, “The book (of Lamentations) consists of five beautiful poems, one for each chapter. The first four are dirges, but the fifth is more like a prayer poem. The first four are alphabetical in arrangement, each having twenty-two stanzas… with each stanza beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.”

The author is considered to be Jeremiah the prophet (here, considered as Jeremiah the poet!), and as we learn in Barnes’ Notes, “Their subject is the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans. In the “first” of these poems… the one that these verses are from… the prophet dwells upon the miseries of hunger, of death in battle, of the profanation and plundering of the sanctuary, and of impending exile, oppressed by which the city sits solitary. In the “second,” these same sufferings are described with more intense force, and in closer connection with the national sins which had caused them, and which had been aggravated by the faithlessness of the prophets. In the “third,” Jeremiah acknowledges that chastisement is for the believer’s good, and he dwells more upon the spiritual aspect of sorrow, and the certainty that finally there must be the redeeming of life for God’s people, and vengeance for His enemies. In the “fourth,” Judah’s sorrows are confessed to have been caused by her sins. Finally, in the “fifth,” Jeremiah prays that Zion’s reproach may be taken away, and that Yahweh will grant repentance unto His people, and renew their days as of old.”

Why are we studying all of this this morning? What have we to do with the sorrows of a nation lost to its sins how many thousands of years ago? What need we concern ourselves with the suffering of a race of people who one could only say fully warranted all that God brought down on them at that time? Because it could just as easily happen again today… and it could happen to us!

Let me ask you something… consider with me some of the changes that those of us who have gone to the Illinois State Fair over the years have noted… it obviously no longer emphasizes agriculture… its focus has slowly grown much more towards attracting and entertaining the more urbanite and ‘sophisticated’ crowds… especially in the evenings! But what has that meant? How many beer tents are there now? How many venders selling tattoos and t-shirts and other paraphernalia that range from distasteful to down-right borderline illegal, and certainly immoral? And if all of this is going on right in the midst of what was once one of our greatest wholesome entertainment affairs, how goes the rest of the country? And how much more do you think God will be willing to take?

I once read a newspaper article that told how ‘spies’ were infiltrating our churches and religious institutions… willing to ‘suffer’ through the liturgies and hymns and sermons in order to catch someone in the act of making a political statement so that they might rush that information to various government agencies… in particular, the IRS… so as to cause their loss of religious tax standing and who knows what else! Satan has gained a very large and devoted following dedicated to the discrediting, demoralizing, and destruction of the Church… and it seems, at times, as if his following is growing faster and stronger than Christ’s. Time was when preachers were expected to sometimes preach politics from the pulpit… time was when Christian ideas and ideals formed the backbone of this country… time was when the Church stood up for social and political issues of all sorts!

Just as one example, when the Cherokee Indians, and others, were being forced to leave their homes and move to reservations, many Christians fought on their behalf to prevent it, and when they couldn’t, many rode with them to offer what aid they could, and to try to see to their being treated humanely.

My point is that there are many instances when acknowledging and doing God’s Will leads us to be more politically aware and active! We must research the candidates and issues, and determine who will best follow the Lord’s leading in determining the direction we are to go. And if there be no suitable candidates, then we must find and promote and elect our own!

How do we do all of that? Where do we get the strength to stand up for the Lord’s teachings and fight Satan at his own game? A clue can be found in Luke 17, verses 5 & 6… “The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” You know, a mustard seed is not very big… in fact, it is one of the tiniest seeds in the world! But Jesus says that if we have only as much faith as might fill up such a seed, we can change the world! And that is what we each must start to do… change the world, in the name of God!

For, as I have said a number of times already, unless we do… unless each and every one of us begins in dire earnest to change the world in God’s name… unless we turn the tide of sin that is ravaging this country of ours… then these words of Jeremiah may well apply to us someday…

How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.

Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations; she finds no resting place. All who pursue her have overtaken her in the midst of her distress.

The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish.

Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. The LORD has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe.

All the splendor has departed from the Daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; in weakness they have fled before the pursuer.

I for one am not willing to set back and just let that happen!
How about you?!