When better than Good Friday to remember that, astoundingly, Lamentations 3 is in the Bible?

I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath;

he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light;

surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; he has broken my bones;

he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation;

he has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago.

He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has made my chains heavy;

though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer;

he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones; he has made my paths crooked.

He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding;

he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces; he has made me desolate;

he bent his bow and set me as a target for his arrow.

He drove into my kidneys the arrows of his quiver;

I have become the laughingstock of all peoples, the object of their taunts all day long.

He has filled me with bitterness; he has sated me with wormwood.

He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes;

my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is;

so I say, "My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the LORD."

Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!

My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.

It is only — only! — after these words that the prophet utters the most famous words of this chapter:

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

"The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him."

The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him;

let him put his mouth in the dust — there may yet be hope;

let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults.

Karl Barth (CD IV.1, §59.1):

In being gracious to man in Jesus Christ, God acknowledges man; He accepts responsibility for his being and nature. He remains Himself. He does not cease to be God. But He does not hold aloof. In being gracious to man in Jesus Christ, He also goes into the far country, into the evil society of this being which is not God and against God. He does not shrink from him. He does not pass him by as did the priest and the Levite the man who had fallen among thieves. He does not leave him to his own devices. He makes his situation His own. He does not forfeit anything by doing this. In being neighbour to man, in order to deal with him and act towards him as such, He does not need to fear for His Godhead. On the contrary… God shows Himself to be the great and true God in the fact that He can and will let His grace bear this cost, that He is capable and willing and ready for this condescension, this act of extravagance, this far journey. What marks out God above all false gods is that they are not capable and ready for this. In their otherworldliness and supernaturalness and otherness, etc., the gods are a reflection of the human pride which will not unbend, which will not stoop to that which is beneath it. God is not proud. In His high majesty He is humble. It is in this high humility that He speaks and acts as the God who reconciles the world to Himself.

Johann Heermann (tr. Robert Bridges):

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon Thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee. ’Twas I, Lord, Jesus, I it was denied Thee! I crucified Thee.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered; The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered; For man’s atonement, while he nothing heedeth, God intercedeth.

For me, kind Jesus, was Thy incarnation, Thy mortal sorrow, and Thy life’s oblation; Thy death of anguish and Thy bitter passion, For my salvation.

T. S. Eliot, “East Coker” IV, from Four Quartets:

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art

Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please

But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,

And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital

Endowed by the ruined millionaire,

Wherein, if we do well, we shall

Die of the absolute paternal care

That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,

The fever sings in mental wires.

If to be warmed, then I must freeze

And quake in frigid purgatorial fires

Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food:

In spite of which we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—

Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

Finally, there are no greater seven minutes in music than the opening statement of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion: “Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen”.