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Lamentations 1:1-6; 3:19-26
John Calvin well describes the distress and doubt which this lesson depicts:

...for there is nothing more difficult for men than to preserve their minds in a state of peace and tranquility, undisturbed by any disquieting fears, whilst they are in this world, which is subject to many changes. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol.V/1, p. 18)

Sometimes feelings like this lead to an utter hopelessness about life, a sense that all that awaits us is the grave. The father of existentialist philosophy Soren Kierkegaard captured these feelings well when he wrote:

I do not care for anything... I do not care at all. There are well-known insects which die in the moment of fecundation. So it is with joy; life’s supreme and richest moment of pleasure is coupled with death. (Either/Or, Vol. 2, p. 234) 

Faith, then, is a kind of rebellion against all the meaninglessness and chaos of life. It is as an African theologian of the early church Tertullian once put it: “It [Christian faith] is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd.”
Mark E.

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Psalm 137
In an exposition on the psalm, in words written more than 1500 years ago, Augustine well describes the human condition and our need for deliverance:

We are tempted by delights of earthly things, and we struggle daily with the suggestions of unlawful pleasures; scarce do we breathe freely even in prayer: we understand that we are captives... Who hath redeemed us? Christ. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 8, p. 631)   

John Calvin sees a word of hope in the psalm. He writes:

If the divine promises inspire us with hope and confidence, and God’s Spirit temper our afflictions to the rule of his own uprightness, we shall lift up our heads in the lowest depths of affliction to which we may be cast down, and glory in the fact that it is well with us and our worst distresses... (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. VI/2, p. 197)
Mark E.

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2 Timothy 1:1-14
There are quite a few stories from the pages of American history. One of them concerns the Declaration of Independence and John Hancock. His autograph on the Declaration of Independence is so well known that it is often used as a noun synonymous to “signature.” The question is why did John Hancock sign his name proportionally larger than the rest of the delegates? Legend states that he signed his name bigger than everyone else’s so that the “fat old king could read it without his spectacles.” According to the story, Hancock was boldly declaring his stance and wanted the king to know it.

Fact, though, is not always the same as the myth. Hancock, as the president of the Continental Congress, was the first person to sign the document and because he was the leader of Congress, his signature was centered below the text. According to the National Archives it was customary that other delegates began to sign at the right below the text in geographical order according to the states they represent. The northernmost state, New Hampshire began and ended with Georgia, the southernmost. While it is possible that the size of Hancock’s signature might be intentional, no one knows for sure.

Whether the size of his signature indicated it or not, it is certain that Hancock and the fifty-five others who signed the Declaration of Independence were making a bold statement. In his final letter, Paul is urging Timothy to be bold in his witness for Jesus. He urges him, “Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God” (2 Timothy 1:8). Will we be bold in our stance for the Lord?
Bill T.

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2 Timothy 1:1-14
Words, words, words. Paul writes in this second letter to Timothy, that “I am grateful to God, whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did…” (2 Timothy 1:31). But the word translated as “worship” is latreia, which is richer word. We get two different English words from this one Greek word – liturgy, the words which we pronounce in worship, and latrine, or toilet. That’s quite a contrast, but the litourgia was a servant who chose to serve a god, or God, by keeping the temple clean in sometimes gutty ways. Paul is talking about worship that includes service at whatever level is necessary.
Frank R.

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Luke 17:5-10
This text certainly has political implications for sermons on caring for the poor and those discriminated against in society. If you want illustrations relevant to these themes, consult the links to my Illustrations for 2019 and 2016. If you want to focus more on the text’s reminder that God owes us nothing, consider John Calvin’s reflections on the lesson:

The object of the parable is to show that God claims all that belongs to us as his property and possesses an entire control over our personals and services; and, therefore, that all the zeal may be manifested by us in discharging our duty does not lay him under obligation to us by any sort of merit; for, as we are his property, so he on his part can owe us nothing. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. XVI/2, p. 194) 

There are two principles, therefore, that must be maintained; first, that God naturally owes us nothing, and that all their services which we render to him are not worth a single straw. (Ibid., p. 196)

Commenting on the text John Wesley writes: “...we are to forgive all, penitent or impenitent (so as to bear them the sincerest good will and to do them all the good we can)...” (Commentary On the Bible, p. 448)

Happy is he who judges himself an unprofitable servant; miserable is he whom God pronounces such. But though we are unprofitable to him, our serving him is not unprofitable to us; for he is pleased to give by his grace a value to our good works... (Ibid.)
Mark E.