One of my mom's favorite Bible study activities was to simply close her eyes and open her Bible and begin reading. This evening I did that and landed on Lamentations, Chapter 5 verses 20-22. These are not popular, feel good Sunday school verses that smiling teachers send home with Kindergarteners, but they are instructive nonetheless. They read, "Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time? Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us."

This is the punishing, Calvinist God of the Old Testament who would smite his own followers for generations because they didn't toe the line. The sorrow in the verses that precede these is palpable. Verse 15 says, "The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned to mourning." Though this was written thousands of years ago, couldn't these same words have been written in modern day Darfur? Mogadishu? Or Calcutta? How many generations of people in these tragic places have seen little but sorrow and pestilence? Do they feel as if God has punished and then abandoned them? How does one have faith in places like those?