What God Does Isn't Imaginable

Scripture:
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look around and see.
Is any suffering like my suffering
that was inflicted on me,
that the Lord brought on me
in the day of his fierce anger?
Lamentations 1:12

Observation: As the writer laments the fall of Jerusalem, he has the city call out to those who wander past it. They see the destruction and are appalled and amazed, but don't stop. The city is so ruined that it is a symbol of the downfall of Judah and Israel, and foreign travelers just wander past it.

This wasn't normal. Typically, if a city were captured by an enemy, it would now be an abandon and damaged place, but others could and would move in. There were houses and infrastructure that could be repaired, repurposed, and immediately provide for a settled life. It was much easier to repair a destroyed city than to build a new one, and the location (water, trade routes) that benefited a large city would clearly benefit a start-up city. We see this in the archeological record all over the world, and especially in the middle east, where ancient cities are built one on top of another, often with "burn layers" mixed in where the city was destroyed in war and then the next iteration just built on top of it.

However, that isn't what happens to Jerusalem. This great city - the city with the greatest buildings, grandest palace, and best homes in the entire land - will be avoided by nomads and travelers and settlers. It is so utterly destroyed that people would rather seek a different place to live than attempt to rebuild the best city in the region.

Application: One of the current AI trends is to use AI to create videos depicting biblical passages. I have seen some amazing videos of Noah and the flood, the exodus out of Egypt, and Elijah pitted against the thousands of prophets of baal. What is interesting to me is how such videos present these events with imagery that is mind-boggling huge and epic ... truly beyond what I have ever imagined the event to have been and beyond any possible natural occurrence ... and then realizing that these images are actually biblically accurate.

So now I wonder ... how destroyed was Jerusalem? It could not have been just an abandoned city with buildings that had damaged walls, the temple burned, and the protective walls torn down. If that was it, surely some group would have come and occupied the city during the next 70 years. If the city had only been damaged, somewhat burned, and abandoned, travelers would view it from the passing roads as just an empty shell of a city. Someone would have come, started fixing up one of the less-damaged parts of the city, shored up a couple building walls, immediately had a functioning neighborhood, and grown from there.

I am beginning to realize that Jerusalem was supernaturally destroyed by the Lord. It wasn't damaged and burned by an army, it was leveled and destroyed by a force beyond human capabilities. It wasn't an empty shell of a city, it was a pile of charred and burned rubble without recognition except for some paths through the piles. Jerusalem burned so badly that the best-made stone structure in the world was unrecognizable. That doesn't sound like a stone city that got burned ... it sounds like a stone city that got carpet-bombed multiple times.

Babylon may have lit the fire, but the Lord destroyed Jerusalem, and he did so in a supernatural way that I cannot even imagine, for even contextual memories like the Lahaina fire must pale in comparison. What God did isn't imaginable in the minds of mortals. The Lord's power is so much greater than anything around which we can create context in our minds that we fail to give him the awe and glory he deserves.

Prayer: Lord, I have thought recently about how small we perceive your power. We can't help it, for we just can't get our minds around your greatness and power, and you even know that. May I never lose sight of the fact that, no matter what I think is a great and powerful act in this world, you are capable of infinitely more. Amen.